Vector Records
2004
Our Shadows Will Remain
About This Album
Joseph Arthur, who had been a critic's darling since his debut in 1998, scored a kind of sleeper hit on the fringes with 2002's Redemption's Son. His searing poetic lyrics and quirky, left-of-the-dial rock and pop sensibilities shone like a flickering beacon from the underside of human emotion and vulnerability. On Our Shadows Will Remain, he takes a further left turn from the heart of isolation and darkness into the broken heart of humanity, seeking to reveal the commonality of experience on the emotional and societal fringes via a sonically labyrinthine tapestry that is by turns raucous, tender, brash, and beautiful. On "Can't Exist," the glissando pop layers of organ and electric guitars underscore his broken, unapologetically confessional lyrics -- "Well I can't exist when you disappear/Disintegrate and I swallow everything/Sister don't be scared, a thousand times or more, I've walked away alive/On my feet again." As the chorus comes roaring from the center, a wall of squalling guitars ushers in a chorus of voices singing a mutant, netherworld gospel of determination and tears. On "Stumble and Pain," a muddied bass and drum pulse plods from the heart of the mix, as a fuzzed-out electric guitar and a forlorn, wasted bluesy acoustic carry Arthur's sung poetry over a string section played by the Prague Philharmonic -- though they sound like they are a forgotten string quartet playing for its life at the end of time itself.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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