Singer/songwriter Joseph Arthur was discovered by Peter Gabriel in the mid-'90s and signed to his Real World label. Arthur's debut, Big City Streets, was released in 1997 and practically went unnoticed. His eclectic musical compositions are similar to the likes of Leonard Cohen, Joe Henry, and the late Jeff Buckley. In 1999, Arthur released the seven-song EP Vacancy, in which he received a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package thanks to his design with co-art director Zachary Larner.

Arthur's newest, Our Shadows Will Remain , is the highly anticipated follow-up to his 2002 recording, Redemption's Son . The new recording is at once Arthur's most concise, focused work to date, and arguably the one that most clearly reveals the breadth of his imagination.

Arthur attributes much of the new album's particularity to the context in which he wrote and recorded it. Late last year, following the release of Redemption's Son , Arthur chose to abandon the familiar surroundings in which he typically created his music - his apartment/home studio on East 22nd Street in Manhattan. He put virtually all of his belongings into a storage unit in New York and headed for New Orleans, taking not

much more than his clothes, his guitar, and rough demos of 10 or 12 new songs. Seven or eight weeks later, Arthur had written some of the most ambitious and richly orchestrated songs of his career.

When the singer is not touring he keeps himself busy with sculpting or painting. "I think vulnerability in art is a really attractive thing", explains Arthur about his artistic passion, "but it's risky to me, because I lay myself bare and expose all my feelings."                                                                                              G.McAuley