Before & After: Damien Jurado’s “Nothing Is The News”

I discovered/remembered the other day via a random search in my iTunes library about the Damien Jurado demo for “Nothing Is The News” on his new album, Maraqopa.  When I first heard the new version, it didn’t immediately strike me as the demo that we posted back in 2010 (see post here with a couple other tracks) despite the first 30 seconds being almost identical.  I now find myself expecting that electric guitar and percussion to kick in at about 35 seconds in…where the demo now feels “unfinished”.  I guess that is the idea behind a track’s journey from thought, to demo, to final album version.  Of course working with Richard Swift (as Jurado did with Maraqopa) you know that he probably would not allow a solo acoustic song anyway!

So with the new version of Nothing Is The News being over twice as long, you know it has made a longer journey than most songs from the demo stage – especially for an artist who is loosely placed in the ‘singer-songwriter’ genre.  So I look at both tracks being almost two separate songs now.  One the early morning shuffling around the house version and one the driving around the Hollywood hills just prior to sunset version.  I will let you decide which is which.

aaaaand the video for the album version:

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~Smansmith