This Fabulous Century has been a work in progress as a vinyl release for nearly two years. After Burnt Toast Vinyl released Damien Jurado’s Four Songs one-sided LP, lots of ideas were thrown around for another vinyl project. Jurado is a very prolific song-writer whose limited run cassette demos circulated before his debut Motorcycle 7” was released on Sub Pop in 1995. Originally, this was to be collected for the vinyl release, but Damien had other things in mind.

This Fabulous Century is a collection of (lucky) thirteen demo songs recorded after Waters Ave. South, but before his ground-breaking Rehearsals for Departure. The songs are much rawer than the material that would become that album, at times lo-fi and sloppy, but always quintessentially Damien Jurado. It is for the Jurado completist, but
that isn’t code for “this album is bad.” Damien shines in ways one would never expect, songs hinted at in 2002’s Secretly Canadian “Big Let Down” 7” and more fully polished and realized here, but also with very catchy pop gems.

Damien collected the songs about a year ago, but never quite decided on the artwork. These being demos, Burnt Toast Vinyl enlisted Ethan Tripp to design the jacket as if it were an unauthorized bootleg. Images were collected off of the internet and from magazines, scanned, tweaked, photocopied, and assembled into the bizarre Rorschach blot looking cover. Jurado fell in love with the design and the LP was scheduled for release. It’s limited to 600 copies, 300 available for retail outlets, the other 300 available from Damien on tour and Burnt Toast Vinyl directly.