{"title":"ER Jurken","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"i-stand-corrected","title":"I Stand Corrected","description":"\u003cp\u003eE.R. Jurken’s \u003ci\u003eI Stand Corrected\u003c\/i\u003e is the debut of a new talent and the debut of a new label, Country Thyme. Yes, a label was formed to release this artist, which means something special is in the air. Upon dropping the needle, you’ll hear exactly what it is, too: an honest-to-God song cycle, riches-to-rags style, rising and falling on the songs of E.R. Jurken and his spectral tenor, refracted via multiple overdubs across an oft-deserted soundscape, like haunted incandescent orchestral pop music with the orchestra mostly erased.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eI Stand Corrected\u003c\/i\u003e took some time to stand up. During the 20-teens, E.R. Jurken - known to friends and family as Ed - drifted through his thirty-somethings, doing not all that well. There didn’t seem to be a place for him in the world. A youthful passion for listening to and playing music and a proclivity for playing and singing hadn’t gone anywhere. He found himself far from home, in the Bay Area, withdrawing from society. This directionless time came to a head in 2012 with a deeply traumatic series of events that subsequently hung over him like a mist - eventually leading Ed to sell all his belongings (including his beloved instruments) and begin a series of moves to New Orleans, his old Milwaukee hometown and finally, to his former and current home, Chicago. These moves were made with no particular idea in mind, other than the hope that they might somehow heal him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe past remained but as Ed got a job and a bit of stability, he reviewed what had been and what might be. With the help of friend and life coach Gene Booth, an idea was hatched: new music that dealt with these lingering issues. Ed bought a guitar off a stranger and Gene referred Ed to longtime Drag City A\u0026amp;R man Rian Murphy, who was indeed interested in the sound of the album Ed had in mind. With wounds just beneath the surface of his skin for so long, Ed began demoing songs on his mobile phone, turning out one a week featuring guitar and extensive vocal arrangements. After a few months, it was clear the cycle was complete.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSessions at The Loft with Murphy and Mark Greenberg (engineer \/ secret weapon of hundreds of sessions including Wilco, Andrew Bird, Edith Frost, Mavis Staples, Eleventh Dream Day and Richard Thompson) slowly drew the album into full-fleshed form. The sound of\u003ci\u003e I Stand Corrected\u003c\/i\u003e is often just acoustic guitar, offset by a lush tableau of vocal arrangements. Ed’s voice works the register, sliding easily into falsetto and adapting equitably to lower octaves as well, while populating the landscape with choruses of vocal colour. These voices cover a wide swath of 20th Century popular music sensibilities, tipping the hat to everything from Paul McCartney, Beach Boys and The Mamas and the Papas to the Boswell Sisters and the Brothers Gibb.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMurphy and Greenberg added just a touch of rhythm in places and Paul Mertens (Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Stereolab, The Sea and Cake, Poi Dog Pondering, Brian Wilson) provided several exquisite horn arrangements that complement the play of Ed’s guitars, keyboards and vocals.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSide one of the album dashes by in suite form, its eight tunes forming a travelogue that, while initially bright and cheerful, eventually descends into melancholic depths that are fully plumbed on the flip side. Ed’s lyrics are obliquely coded - beautiful and surreal, referencing something horribly wrong behind the curtain. The sweet sadness of a life spent waiting to be informs the music with comings and goings, drawing us into confusion and yearning, showing a heart that resembles our own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout the process that made \u003ci\u003eI Stand Corrected\u003c\/i\u003e, Ed found himself necessarily returning to the dark places of 2012, attempting to maintain a balance between his present ‘corrected’ state of mind and the one that had proven to be ‘erroneous’ years earlier - as if he was entering a contaminated area to extract hazardous materials, transmuting them, then finding the psychic relief of the splinters being removed. The sands of time were whispering that life was in front of him and the chaos of the past was receding. Ed’s music was powerful energy pointed suddenly outwards. Now, his sense of release can be transferred to the listener through the magic of recording technology - and, in the field of freaky records made by sensitive folk, \u003ci\u003eI Stand Corrected \u003c\/i\u003estands tall.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Country Thyme","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50499995042123,"sku":"1117910","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/5d9a58c3-c86e-4745-8b62-25e09c4294f6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727775286"},{"product_id":"to-be-continued-1","title":"To Be Continued","description":"\u003cp\u003eER Jurken’s songwriting, as evidenced by his acclaimed first album \u003cem\u003eI Stand Corrected\u003c\/em\u003e, 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTo Be Continued\u003c\/em\u003e, 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 underscores Ed and Co’s easy riding rock and roll. Spelled in spots by Paul Von Mertens’ extraordinary string and horn arrangements, the songs of \u003cem\u003eTo Be Continued \u003c\/em\u003eaggressively transcend and defy the stings of everyday misfortune.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s been five years since Ed’s first album. They piled up in a hurry, but what years they were, encompassing COVID, Trump, Biden and the American political merry-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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHappy 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 \u003cem\u003eTo Be Continued\u003c\/em\u003e. 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eER Jurken’s \u003cem\u003eTo Be Continued \u003c\/em\u003eis 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Country Thyme","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":56232692973899,"sku":"R9037-1288","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/2000x2000bb_b4443f99-a058-4cd8-8063-7d35416883e8.jpg?v=1767625777"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/er-jurken.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}