On My Way To Absence finds this introspective singer-songwriter combining the quiet bearing which was a hallmark of his early work, with the more muscular rock of his I Break Chairs album. Damien Jurado and his longtime collaborator Eric Fisher have built these dozen songs with a pop sculptor's sense of space and scale. They're capable of anchoring the songs that one can imagine strummed plaintively and alone, to the subtle propulsion of drums (as on "Lion Tamer," "Simple Hello"). They also build songs over rhythmic foundations that are an inescapable part of the song's identity ("I Am The Mountain"). Lyrically the set is suffused with loss and jealousy, tempered with glimmers of hope and redemption. The set's closing number, "A Jealous Heart Is A Heavy Heart" ends with the simple plea, "Grow old with me."