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Here's a very heavy-handed assertion, both indelicate and immodest: Daryl Scairiot is one of the finest songwriters working today. A first-rate craftsman in the tradition of Leonard Cohen and Elvis Costello, Arizona-born Daryl Scairiot possesses a formidable command both of language and of the idiom of lyric-writing. Nihilistic, savage and scatological; tender, elegant and human, Scairiot's songs spark with misanthropic beauty.

Scairiot's musical universe is a collision of the majestic and the grotesque. Finding his muses in the theater of man's darker desires and dubious motivations, he creates brutal comedies in which these shadows confess themselves and may (or may not) be redeemed. The musical setting for these shadow-plays is a tempestuous avant-country, Americana noir sound, evocative of some collision of Nick Cave, Johnny Cash and Ben E. King (with perhaps the faintest echoes of Randy Newman), sometimes raunchy, sometimes splendid, with echoes of vaudeville and notable departures into rock and boozy, 1930s-ish cabaret jazz. First and foremost a singer, Scairiot is best-known for his powerful baritone voice and his strong, memorable melodies.

Recently, Scairiot has collected around him a handful of top-notch musicians and begun performing under the moniker Turn Back, O Man. Between the lot of them, the band has variously and respectively shared the stage with such indie luminaries as M. Ward, Giant Sand, the New Pornographers, Calexico, Magnolia Electric Company, Califone, Devotchka, Jason Lytle (Grandaddy), Smog, Pernice Brothers, My Morning Jacket, the Devil Makes Three, the Dolly Ranchers, Jason Webley and the Velvet Teen.