The first song from Damien Jurado's 10th album sounds straightforward at first, until the members of his band begin to seemingly solo as they please. With its soaring, fuzzed-out guitars and blues-inspired organ blurts, "Nothing Is the News" lets its drums serve as a kind of homing beacon, bringing the listener and the band back to something solid when they start to get lost in all the noodling.
Though the epic jams drown out all but the occasional snippet of a phrase — "They were all wrong," "All that you want is gone" — the song still conveys the themes of alienation and longing that have defined Jurado's work. But sonically, he sounds reinvented once again in "Nothing Is the News": He's not just a sad singer-songwriter, but the leader of a band whose music searches and sprawls.
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