Gig review: Damien Jurado at Leeds City Varieties

“No, it’s not that kind of a party,” Jurado chuckles. “I’m the host.” It goes without saying that the host decides what we are listening to.

It’s unlikely anyone gathered in the sumptuous surroundings of City Varieties tonight would have reason to argue with our host’s song choices. For a set populated largely by tunes that aren’t so much deep cuts as deeply submerged in obscurity, gathered from all corners of Jurado’s 20-odd years as an active musician, the performance conjures a seriously hypnotic pull.

In music, ‘cinematic’ is often used to indicate rich arrangements that drip in drama. The term is equally apt in relation to Jurado’s songwriting. During an extended anecdote to allow for a break for cramping hands (the Washington-based songwriter is battling a nerve condition that can make playing guitar challenging, not that you’d notice tonight), Jurado explains that he never listens to the style of acoustic music he plays. “That would be like a doctor hanging around hospitals during time off,” he jokes. Instead, his writing is influenced primarily by movies.

Faced with stunning songs such as I Am Still Here, which draws a compelling portrait of a lonely man in denial about the end of his marriage, with an almost unbearable poignancy that brings to mind a Raymond Carver or Richard Yates short story with the booze and bravura removed to leave only unfathomable hurt, the non-musical points of reference seem fitting. Most songwriters’ material fades into dull insignificance when stripped bare of their arrangements.

Equipped only with a guitar, a microphone, an impressively potent voice ranging from a falsetto sigh to a throaty testimonial and two notebooks of lyrics, Jurado’s songs seem more substantial and unique when freed of any additional elements, with the glare of the spotlight faced firmly on the lyrics and the melodies, which often sound timeless enough to suggest they’ve been floating in the ether for decades, just waiting to be plucked by a songwriter tuned to the right frequency.

Faced with songs such as the relationship demise lament The Loneliest Place and Allocate (“ain’t it sad to see your life not work out” goes one line that never started a single party), it’s easy to assume that Jurado and everyone he comes into contact with are surrounded by a permanent, impenetrable fog of gloom.

The material undoubtedly packs a seriously heavy emotional heft but that doesn’t make tonight’s show a downer in the least: somehow the sadness, accompanied by Jurado’s jovial hosting, proves life-affirming – and completely compelling.