OTHER PEOPLE'S SONGS VOL. 1

Over the weekend of August 21-22 2010 not long after Damien Jurado and Richard Swift first collaborated to produce Damien s 2010 record Saint Bartlett the pair hunkered down with a 4-track recorder and one Coles 4038 ribbon microphone to record a collection of cover songs that run the gamut from John Denver to Chubby Checker to Kraftwerk. The timing was perfect. On Other People s Songs Vol 1 we can see the scaffolding of what would become a creative turning point for the pair - later seen with the release of Damien Jurado s Maraqopa the first record in his Maraqopa trilogy - less than 2 years later. The opening drum hits of quot;Be Not So Fearfulquot; the falsetto vocals of quot;Sweetnessquot; and the Spaghetti-Western swing of quot;Radioactivityquot; are by now hallmarks of the Jurado/Swift sound but Other People s Songs Vol 1 is a transitional fossil a marking of the pair s collaborative evolution.