We first wrote about Jacob Furr back in 2014 when we reviewed his debut album Trails & Traces. The record was an intensely personal one, exploring loss and grief as both a mode of personal healing and an attempt to help others open up and share their own sadness, thereby creating some sort of communication and togetherness which might allow love and fondness to survive whatever pain is currently present. The result was what we called “ten tracks of folk/Americana goodness,” ranging from acoustic strums and country-tinged foot-tappers to larger rock songs with noisy climaxes, story-telling songs which championed hope over regret.
Sierra Madre, the follow-up full length, builds upon the various threads on Trails & Traces to form a heavier and more cohesive sound. As with all the best folk songs, Furr’s songwriting creates whole times and places around pivotal moments in the lives of his characters, people lost amidst huge forces around them, happenings concerning fate and prophecy and the great weight of history pressing down. As such, the record is darker than his previous, existing on the edge of things, as though one bad day away from being consumed by the depression or dread or dead-eyed distress that plagues the narratives.
Sometimes, as on ‘El Paso’ and ‘Ophanim’, this registers as lonely minimal guitar and sad yearning lyrics concerning characters trapped by visions of the past, while others as something with a little more bounce, with tracks such as ‘Taillights’ and ‘Wire’ cast from the nostalgia unique to those who can see the world they knew slipping through their fingers. ‘The River’ is a dark biblical folk song which simmers with danger, a sort of devil-dealing desperation which winds and writhes with the prospect of violence, while ‘Estacado’ responds to despair with a brash lucidity, a man drawing words from deep within himself, voice booming with the confidence of those with little left to lose.
“And I drew so deep upon the well of love
As I watched the sickness growing in her eyes
The heart dries up and starts to wither
At the bottom of a well that has run dryAnd the sky looks ready to fall down
And my ears are ringing with the sound of the thunder
And I know I am ready to cry now”
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However, the album’s weightiest moments serve as bookends to the release. The title track opens with an elemental vibe, stark guitar cutting through the reverb like licks of lightning through a darkened sky. Furr’s vocals are dragging along, rising and straining in staccato bursts as though compelled by forces unseen. Closer ‘Easy Waves’ is heavy in the opposite sense, possessing the mass of wide open spaces populated with nothing but stone and shadow, the characters left to cling to lovers and memories as one would a life-ring, fighting to keeping their heads above water in the hope of one day finding calmer seas.
“Call your name, call your name
Let the waves wash over me.
Is there truth in the smoke rings
cos I’ve been burning cigarettes
walking the edge of sorrow
I heard love’s not through with me yet”
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The sentiment is a pertinent one for the record as a whole, voicing the general feeling Furr imparts through his songwriting. Hope doesn’t have to be a sentimental act or retreat from reality, rather a considered and consistent refusal to give in. Given the confidence in Furr’s voice, it seems he understand this, finds strength in weathering storms, and, what’s more, wants to share that notion with you too.
Sierra Madre is out now and you can grab a copy from the Jacob Furr Bandcamp page.