Joseph Arthur

Our Shadows Will Remain

December 16, 2004

# 4

No one I know has ever heard of Joseph Arthur. Tossing around that name over the years has always yielded the same result: “Who?” After four years of trying I’m about ready to give up. So guess what happens? Joseph Arthur drops the best album of his career, Our Shadows Will Remain, I’m back to the fruitless name-dropping, and Arthur continues his march through obscurity. As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Joseph Arthur is folk music’s genius bastard son. He’s an artsy fartsy folky reject from Ohio, discovered by Peter Gabriel, who seems to be even stranger than his music. He paints. He writes poetry. He’s sour, misanthropic, yet somehow manages to conjure up Biblical images of despair, hope and redemption in his best music. Our Shadows Will Remain is his fourth effort and by far the best and most complete album he has ever made.

My discovery of Joseph Arthur happened as a bolt of lightning in early 2000. Having just moved out of my parent’s home in Bricktown, New Jersey, I was on my own for the first time in my life (college, of course, doesn’t count). One weekend, alone in my apartment, bored stiff, and desperately searching for something to do I turned on the television. Flipping through the channels I landed on MTV and was promptly greeted by a very strange music video. It was Joseph Arthur, dressed in his usual sunglasses and sporting his signature floppy haircut. As I watched I saw Arthur walking around a big city, his face buried in a book and miniature angel wings attached to his back. Following the video’s credits, I hopped onto the Internet and downloaded In the Sun, the song that had entranced me. Ten consecutive plays later I was convinced: this guy was the real deal. It was a fascinating experience and four years later those images continue to glow in my mind.

Years have passed but I’ve kept an eye on Joseph Arthur’s progress. I’ve managed to listen to most of the songs from his first two albums without ever having purchased them. Some I’ve enjoyed, others, to be honest, have bored me. But something about the guy and the way he turns a song into a confession about God and humankind’s relationship with a deity continues to mesmerize me.

Our Shadows Will Remain continues that theme, but this time, war stands beside God in Joseph Arthur’s musical tapestry. God’s place in life isn’t taken for granted anymore. Contemplating war will do that for a psyche. Where most artists, be them rockers, folkies, rappers, or whoever, might mock God, Jesus, and religion in their music as little more than a crutch for the weak minded, Joseph Arthur wonders when society decided man was his own god and didn’t need a higher power. Arthur is never preachy with what he does, but he is adamant in finding place and meaning for his own faith within the context of a troubled and troubling world. And the more I think about what Joseph Arthur is trying to do with Our Shadows Will Remain, the more surprised I am that so few others aren’t attempting something similar.

In the past I’ve enjoyed pieces of Joseph Arthur, but this is the first time I’ve really enjoyed a full album of his work. In many ways, this may be the album U2 would have made if they had more courage this go around, but alas, they did not, and Joseph Arthur has picked up the pieces in noble fashion. Check out Can’t Exist, for example, a song that starts as a straight ahead rock number then morphs into some otherworldly place with static guitars crunching through an ensemble chorus of pleading voices. Or perhaps Leave Us Alone is most representative of The Joseph Arthur Experience, at once slow and melodic yet bursting with sonic texture and thoughtful wordplay. Together, as the bookends of this album, the songs are creepy and foreboding, fascinating and thoughtful.

To be perfectly frank, I am tired of hearing about Coldplay and Keane and Dashboard Confessional and just about anyone else who pours their heart out on their records only for themselves. Merely putting your emotions on your sleeve for all to see and hear does not a great record make. There is a bigger picture out there that I believe artists such as those I just mentioned miss out on, a picture that Joseph Arthur isn’t afraid to face. For all the Coldplay, Keane, and Dashboard Confessional fans and wannabes sitting in the closet with their journals stained with tears, I say put away those damn diaries, dry your eyes, and try something equally as heartbreaking and fifty times more challenging, both musically and lyrically. His name is Joseph Arthur and his album is Our Shadows Will Remain. And even if you don’t, I bet I’ll be back in another five years to remind you.

Note: The title Our Shadows Will Remain comes from the atomic bomb phenomenon where an object that shielded another object from the surface heat of the explosion leaves behind its shadow on that shielded object. By measuring the angles of the shadows, the location of the explosion can be determined. This happens with objects as well as people. It is a strange and heartbreaking phenomenon.