Ghost of David

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.

Track listing

1. Medication
2. Desert
3. Johnny Go Riding
4. Great Today
5. Tonight I Will Retire
6. Ghost of David
7. Parking Lot
8. Rearview
9. Paxil
10. Walk with Me
11. December
12. Rosewood Casket
13. Ghost in the Snow