Mark Lanegan - Field Songs (LP)

Damien Jurado’s Ghost of David is the sort of record that creeps up on you late at night and won’t leave. Released in 2000 on Sub Pop, it’s the Seattle songwriter’s third album and still one of his most quietly devastating statements. He pares everything back to a bare room and a voice that sounds lived-in, and then lets the stories do the heavy lifting. If you know Jurado from later, lusher work, this is the blueprint. Sparse, trembly, deeply human.

The first thing that hits you is the air around the notes. Acoustic guitar up close, tape hiss like a second instrument, tiny room noises tucked between lines. It’s not lo-fi for its own sake. It’s about intimacy, the sense that he’s a metre away with the lights down. Jurado has always been a writer first, and here the characters arrive half-lit, caught in memory or in the aftermath of a bad choice. You don’t need a lyric sheet to feel the ache. You can hear it in the way he shapes a phrase and then lets it hang, as if even he isn’t sure whether to go on.

Medication is the gateway song for good reason. It’s one of those Jurado tracks that fans gently push across the counter to newcomers, a tender but unsparing look at coping and the little compromises we make to get through the day. The melody sinks in on the second listen and refuses to budge. Tonight I Will Retire pulls the same trick with even fewer moving parts. He sketches a scene with a handful of lines, and by the time the last chord fades you’re left wondering what happened to the person after the song ended. That afterglow is the album’s secret power.

Ghost of David isn’t just sad songs with soft guitars. There’s tension in the way he parcels out detail, a restraint that gives the record shape. When he leans into a rougher strum or pushes his voice a notch higher, it lands. The sequencing helps too, guiding you through quiet confessions and small flares of resolve. On a good stereo, and especially on Ghost of David vinyl, you catch depth that digital can shave off. The low hum, the breath before a line, the way the room blooms when a chord opens up. It’s a perfect needle-drop album for a slow evening.

Critics clocked it early. Around release, outlets like Pitchfork and AllMusic singled out the writing and the stark production, noting how Jurado could make a world out of a whisper. Fans have since tucked it among the era’s essential singer-songwriter records, a quiet companion to the more widely cited touchstones of the time. It sits neatly between Rehearsals for Departure and the louder detour of I Break Chairs, and you can hear the path he’d later take toward the widescreen albums of the next decade.

Part of the charm is how unforced it feels. Jurado doesn’t grandstand. He trusts the songs. That trust makes the record oddly addictive, the way certain novels are. You put it on intending to hear a track and end up listening right through, following small threads of tone and story. If you collect Damien Jurado albums on vinyl, this is one you’ll keep within easy reach, filed next to the favourites you throw on when the house finally goes quiet.

For crate diggers, it’s the kind of LP you stumble across in a Melbourne record store, flip to check the Sub Pop logo, then bring home without a second thought. And if you prefer not to leave the couch, plenty of shops make it simple to buy Damien Jurado records online. Ghost of David vinyl shows up reliably, and it’s a satisfying way to round out a shelf of thoughtful folk and indie songcraft. It also pops up often in vinyl records Australia listings, usually well loved, which feels right for an album built to be lived with.

Two decades on, Ghost of David hasn’t dulled. It still sounds like a private conversation you’re lucky to overhear, and that closeness is its lasting gift. For anyone exploring Damien Jurado vinyl or just chasing a record that rewards quiet attention, this remains a standout, a small classic that whispers and somehow fills the room.