ER Jurken
To Be Continued: Vinyl LP
CNT103
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$37.00
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Label: Country Thyme / Drag City
Release Date: 30th January
If you didn't check ER Jurken's debut 2021 album 'I Stand Corrected' please go and check it out immediately, it's a baroque folk pop delight but very much a one-man-band affair and so his 5 years in the making follow-up finds him backed by a band and letting rip. The result finds the lushness of his debut, the sweeping baroque pop strings striking a balance with a rockier country folk, with it being almost impossible for me not to nod towards Neil Young and his Crazy Horse. Saying that, it does still retain Jurken's deft touch with the whimsical and melancholic.
ER Jurken’s songwriting, as evidenced by his acclaimed first album I Stand Corrected, is inclined to wander through the past century or so of American music with a uniquely insouciant flair. On his debut, Ed (as his friends call him) did most of the playing himself, underscoring a deeply personal song-cycle of rise, fall and redemption— a bare-bones production that ran the gamut from whoa to woe and back again! To Be Continued, his sophomore release, finds his baroque folk-pop fantasias literally on the rocks— because this time around, Ed’s got a power trio of players from Chicago’s Junegrass to help him crank it up and out of the park. Once up in the air, his heavenly high tenor and vocal choir melodies further extrude the twisted psyche that under-scores Ed & Co’s easy riding rock ‘n roll. Spelled in spots by Paul Von Mertens’ extraordinary string and horn arrangements, the songs of To Be Continued aggressively transcend and defy the stings of everyday misfortune.
It’s been five years since Ed’s first album. Five years! They piled up in a hurry, but what years they were, encompassing COVID, Trump, Biden and the American politty-go round, January 6th and July 20th (the day the Milwaukee Bucks secured their first championship in 50 years!). For Ed personally, there was also the end of a romantic relationship, the daily struggles that come with working and growing older, and a frustrating period of writer’s block. Novel things that profoundly impacted Ed, to be sure. When the new tunes finally surfaced, requesting and requiring different styles, more conventional song structures and most of all, a shot of rock and roll, Ed was there for the changes.
Happy to be crafting his singular new songs in distinctly new musical textures, Ed ensconced himself once again at The Loft, with Mark Greenberg and Rian Murphy assisting the production. To back his vocals, guitar and keyboards, he brought Ben Brazil, Grant Engstrom and Jack Schemenauer in on bass, guitar, drums and percussion. The stalwart rock and roll they generate is further elevated by an old pal of Ed’s from way back, Jonathan Kult, who played additional piano. Strings and horns under the direction of arranger/reedist Paul Von Mertens lift several tracks ever closer to the heavens. The combined tumult of all and sundry form an excellent vessel for the surreal melodrama of To Be Continued. As fluently as Ed’s songwriting passes through eras of American pop, the songs themselves ramble easily through passageways of existence, finding equal measures of illumination, disillusion and affirmation at every turn.
ER Jurken’s To Be Continued is a second grand entry in the canon of outside/inside rock and roll records by an emerging master of the form, an exquisite and timeless musical expression that meets the desperation of the modern world on the beach, with a disarmingly allusive, tuneful and surprising spirit.
It’s been five years since Ed’s first album. Five years! They piled up in a hurry, but what years they were, encompassing COVID, Trump, Biden and the American politty-go round, January 6th and July 20th (the day the Milwaukee Bucks secured their first championship in 50 years!). For Ed personally, there was also the end of a romantic relationship, the daily struggles that come with working and growing older, and a frustrating period of writer’s block. Novel things that profoundly impacted Ed, to be sure. When the new tunes finally surfaced, requesting and requiring different styles, more conventional song structures and most of all, a shot of rock and roll, Ed was there for the changes.
Happy to be crafting his singular new songs in distinctly new musical textures, Ed ensconced himself once again at The Loft, with Mark Greenberg and Rian Murphy assisting the production. To back his vocals, guitar and keyboards, he brought Ben Brazil, Grant Engstrom and Jack Schemenauer in on bass, guitar, drums and percussion. The stalwart rock and roll they generate is further elevated by an old pal of Ed’s from way back, Jonathan Kult, who played additional piano. Strings and horns under the direction of arranger/reedist Paul Von Mertens lift several tracks ever closer to the heavens. The combined tumult of all and sundry form an excellent vessel for the surreal melodrama of To Be Continued. As fluently as Ed’s songwriting passes through eras of American pop, the songs themselves ramble easily through passageways of existence, finding equal measures of illumination, disillusion and affirmation at every turn.
ER Jurken’s To Be Continued is a second grand entry in the canon of outside/inside rock and roll records by an emerging master of the form, an exquisite and timeless musical expression that meets the desperation of the modern world on the beach, with a disarmingly allusive, tuneful and surprising spirit.