This album is always associated with August 2000 in my mind, because that's when I bought it; and that's possibly the last time I listened to it. That summer was when I finally felt like I emerged from a very difficult twelve-or-more months. It was the confluence of the holiday on the Thames, the start of my relationship with D, and (honestly) seeing The Magnetic Fields for the first times, which seemed to both mark the turning of the tide and to accelerate it in a particular direction.
Suddenly I had this massive appetite for art and culture of all kinds. Not just music, but literature and visual arts as well. I just wanted to read, see and listen to everything that was happening. However, it was music that stuck in the end, regaining a momentum that it has kept to this day. For this was the beginning of the Big Binge of CD-buying, there era when I bought well over 350 albums in the space of 30 months (at which point I moved to London and switched to live music, which is more expensive but requires less space for storage).
Come to Where I'm From was early on in the Binge. It only took one favourable review or mention by someone whose taste I respected and I'd snap up a CD. In this case, I think it was reading that Peter Gabriel had got personally involved in signing Joseph Arthur because he liked his songs so much. Regrettably I found, and can find, little to like. It looks as though much has been invested in this album: lavish packaging, Anton Corbijn doing the photos, Jim Keltner playing the drums, and Eno-sidekick Marcus Dravs doing the programming. But it sounds like a poor man's Beck, and very dreary with it. Listening to it today, I became impatient for it to end.
At the time, thought, it didn't diminish my appetite at all. I just put it to one side and bought more.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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