Working Titles

Damien Jurado made Maraqopa with the late producer Richard Swift, and the pair found a sound together that didn’t exist anywhere else — a blown-out, heavily reverbed kind of folk psychedelia that sounded like country music filtered through an empty barn at dusk. “Working Titles” is the quietest and most hymnal thing on the record.

Jurado’s voice sits way back in the mix, the drums hit like they’re being played in the next room, and the chorus lands with the plainspoken certainty of a man who has just figured something important out and is telling you in the only way he can. Music for a morning when the year has turned and you need something that sounds like it comes from further away than it is.