Ghost of David

Ghost of David
Studio album by Damien Jurado
Released September 19, 2000
Genre Indie rock
Length 43:55
Label Sub Pop
Damien Jurado chronology

Rehearsals for Departure
(1999)
Ghost of David
(2000)
I Break Chairs
(2002)

Ghost of David is an album by the singer-songwriter Damien Jurado, released in 2000 on Sub Pop records. The David of the title is Jurado's friend and former bandmate in Coolidge, David Bazan, who is most famously Pedro the Lion's frontman. In tone, Ghost of David is bleak, spare, and depressing. Most of its thirteen songs concern deception, death or tell tragic stories of deception and death. For example, "Medication," the album's opener, is a first-person tale: the narrator, under the strain of having an adulterous affair with a police officer's wife as well as caring for his mentally unbalanced brother, prays for his brother's death. "December" laments a man who froze to death in his car. "Paxil," as its title suggests (referring to an anti-depressant drug), mentions medicating "a heart that doesn't work." The title track came from a dream Jurado had that his friend David Bazan had died, and the words he would have said to comfort his widow.

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Pitchfork Media (8.2/10) link

Track listing

  1. "Medication" – 4:34
  2. "Desert" – 2:57
  3. "Johnny Go Riding" – 3:42
  4. "Great Today" – 2:58
  5. "Tonight I Will Retire" – 5:09
  6. "Ghost of David" – 2:34
  7. "Parking Lot" – 4:00
  8. "Rearview" – 2:05
  9. "Paxil" – 2:16
  10. "Walk with Me" – 3:16
  11. "December" – 4:19
  12. "Rosewood Casket" – 2:58
  13. "Ghost in the Snow" – 3:07