Saint Bartlett

Over the course of his career, Damien Jurado has explored the minutia of American life through a distinctive lens, with characters forced to confront the ugly truths and missed chances in dirt towns, soundtracked by Jurado's plaintive, bare-bone folk sounds. His last record, 2008's Caught in the Trees, turned the camera inward, dealing with the messy aftermath of the singer/songwriter's divorce. It was a heavy album, fraught with aching drama, but also, for the first time in Jurado's career, a necessary and hard-earned sense of hope. When Jurado sang, "He's no bullshit talker," in the record's best song, one got the sense that he was bolstering himself up.

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