Kevin Bronson on July 26th, 2011

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Anybody who checked out Joseph Arthur’s remarkable residency in February at the Bootleg Theater knows the 39-year-old artist is more than just a songwriter. You could get as lost in the Bootleg’s auxiliary rooms – which, during the residency, were turned into a Museum of Modern Arthur to display his paintings and prints – as you could in his emotive songs. The video for the tender “Love Never Asks You to Lie” (from his latest album “The Graduation Ceremony”) marks Arthur’s directorial debut, and it features the singer’s nephew Cyrus and Cyrus’ “girlfriend,” who lives in the same building. Try not to smile.

||| Download: “Out on a Limb”

||| Live: Joseph Arthur performs Sept. 22 at the Troubadour.