4. The Horizon Just Laughed / Damien Jurado

"These things happened a long time ago," Jurado sings on arguably the year's perfect song, but his sentiments seem proximate and poignant.  "We only had ten dollars to our name / It was not enough to get us home / What was I thinking trusting you? / My family was right all along."  As he leaves, "off to Nebraska, off to Maine," he realizes Thomas Wolfe was right: "you can't go home again," wherever and whatever that place may be.

And yet, The Horizon Just Laughed sounds exactly like home.  Though a collection of "goodbye songs," as Jurado calls it, with run-ups, sendoffs, homages, and elegies, the record resounds with the crackling warmth of better days.  Rich and graceful, The Horizon Just Laughed is a fully-realized addition to the American singer-songwriter canon; where Jurado initially toiled as a lo-fi folk troubadour, over the years his arrangements have given way to a lush nostalgia powered by his velvet baritone.

The Seattle musician's 13th studio album may be his best.  He self-produced for the first time, employing a deft use of strings, piano, wurlitzer, and backing choirs.  Everything feels purposeful, nothing out of place, allowing his arrangements to accentuate his crisp lyricism and beautiful timbre.  His vivid '70s AM pop glow is deeply affecting and the perfect backdrop for his allusive storytelling, which incorporates bygone bandleaders, screenwriters, novelists, and cartoonists.

The record opens with sweeping strings on "Allocate," as he chides a former lover: "Ain't it sad to see your life not work out? / What made you think I would live in your frown / As you're waiting around for the witches to drown?  The track sounds like an old revelation discovered after hours of vinyl crate digging, immersive and enchanting.

"Percy Faith" bubbles up like a song from The Band's catalog, its chorus a blend of oohs and aahs, and its defining feature a series of wurlitzer runs.  "Marvin Kaplan" is a thousand old love songs distilled into something sparkling and new; "where the rain once fell / I lost myself / to the one I love."  As she returns, "like she always does," Jurado exults: "Someone to notice me," confirming again that love is just paying close attention.

"The Last Great Washington State" is a gorgeous reverie to his beloved home, as it gently sways into lovely little choral epiphanies.  "Over Rainbows and Rainier" is a different kind of homage, as Jurado imagines himself being carried over that active volcano when this all comes to an end.  A beautiful and forlorn ballad, he is accompanied by his traveling partner the Angel Moroni: 

I was late to the parlor
When the wind it blew forward
And demanded we get out of town
So me and Moroni took the keys to the steeple
And awaited Armageddon to go down.

The horizon might laugh because it knows we can never escape.  We can never quite get there.  We can never just fly over peaks and leave this all behind.  But these songs sure come awfully close.