Joseph Arthur Comes Clean

It’s Friday the 13th, and Joseph Arthur’s luck is holding out. He’s pedaled his bicycle under threatening skies all the way from his home in Brooklyn’s industrial DUMBO neighborhood to Manhattan’s trendy East Village. Just as he enters a tiny coffeehouse on Avenue A, the skies open up, pouring buckets. This is Arthur’s first interview since he finished his fourth album, the exquisite Our Shadows Will Remain (and this less lucky journalist just totaled her car driving from upstate New York to meet the singer/songwriter). Even if he’d gotten drenched, Arthur says, he wouldn’t have minded, because he loves the freedom his bike gives him. And freedom is what the 32-year-old musician’s life is all about right now.

After eight years with a label that was no longer interested in his work, he’s now found a new home for his gorgeous, dark melodies, dense sonic textures and poetic lyrics. And, even more important to Arthur, he’s freed himself from his demons. “I’m on a quest for personal liberation that I think is a direct result of growing up through a process of paranoia and weirdness in between every record I’ve put out,” he says. “When you’re dealing with a big company, it’s all about numbers, and if you don’t sell a certain amount of records, you’re not gonna get your phone calls returned.” Eventually released from his contract, Arthur signed with the independent Vector, home to Damien Rice and Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson.

On “I Am”—a strident, bass-driven track from Shadows—Arthur sings, “To find out what you really are / You must wake up from this long nap.”

“That’s the goal of my life,” he says. “That’s the way I’ve learned to deal with things—as opposed to overdosing. I’ve gone the other way. I’m a sober person now, and I’m into evolving, realizing myself.” It’s been seven months, in fact, since Arthur—a self-described binge drinker since his teens—has imbibed. And he even managed to stay off booze while recording Shadows in America’s most decadent city, New Orleans.