Albums of the Year: After Finding Himself, Amen Dunes Finally Found Freedom

Albums of the Year: After Finding Himself, Amen Dunes Finally Found Freedom




This past summer, in a Vulture interview headlined, “How to Write a Song in 2018,” Charli XCX let's in on a sobering secret about contemporary songwriting. She revealed how, eager to head off streaming’s dreaded “skip rate,” a metric that measures whether or not a listener moves on from one song to the next in much less than 30 seconds, pop writers are right now pandering to our shrinking attention spans.


“Everybody’s like, ‘Get to the chorus before 30 seconds; ensure the intro is two seconds long,’” she mentioned. “Why the fuck are we thinking about that once we’re writing a fucking song?”


It’s a slight not only against the creatives, yet also us, the listeners, swept up in the blistering pace of a modern world that urges us to cut to the feeling. Thankfully, it’s a speed of which Amen Dunes’ Damon McMahon is blissfully unaware. The Brooklyn-based artist’s latest album, Freedom—inspired by popular idols like Bob Marley, The Beatles, and Tom Petty, and also “really, really good mainstream music”—is anything nevertheless immediate. Alternatively, it’s a patient assortment of spacious, spiritual rock that slowly blooms from song to song. You arrive at Freedom’s highest highs immediately after gorgeous, minutes-long builds, arrangements steered by subtle additions and gradual evolution that give each cut its own swagger and sense of purpose.


On closer “L.A.,” It’s the moment once the bass suddenly asserts itself, abruptly thrust to the face of the mix as McMahon sings, “She looked so pretty, cigarette in her mouth.” He’s looking back at a past love, unable to stop himself as nostalgia inflames his senses: “Blue eye, you lied, I miss you, that's all.” “Miki Dora,” a stunning ode to the surfer-slash-fugitive of the same name, walks and then runs toward its sweeping conclusion, as though you’re scanning over a color gradient up until you’ve arrived at the deepest, most vivid hue. With the help of producer Chris Coady — a pillar of indie rock whose work has shaped albums by Beach Home, Slowdive, Porches, and more — McMahon has made his most finely-tuned work to date, a masterpiece by an artist who lived several lives before he was able to settle on this clearer iteration of himself.


The circuitous path that led McMahon to this included a false begin in the early-2000s New York City buzz musical group Inouk, a poorly-received solo record under his own name, four other Amen Dunes LPs of varying brilliance, and one scrapped attempt at Freedom that McMahon says lacked the “divine spark.” Freedom was hard-won for the 38-year-old, nevertheless there’s a unhurried, yogic intensity to McMahon’s faith in himself, his seeming belief that every step only brought him closer to this achievement as segment of one, slow release.


The album is “a relinquishing of self through an exploration of self,” he told Aquarium Drunkard in March. It’s a 11-song examination of agonized masculinity, American outlaws, absentee fathers, McMahon’s own identity, and the blessing of quiet faith. In the dialogue of Freedom, each story sounds cosmic, each character touched by God and tortured by ego. The people McMahon statistics all live beside their demons, and over the course of each song, so do you. They’re haunted figures who are tired of themselves, and their own missteps, yet unable to do anything yet repeat them. McMahon, yet, doesn’t judge; rather, he exorcises, casting out the spirits out by confronting them.


If we’re lucky, life is long, and the mistakes, insecurities, and doubts we survive with daily will have the chance to dissolve in the background of our larger story. Yet so also will multiple relationships, memories that will fade, and the places in our mind that we’ll one day no longer revisit. Ultimately, acceptance of this fate is our only consolation; our freedom comes as soon as we pick to move with it. On his fifth Amen Dunes LP, McMahon urges us to stop running, to appraise ourselves, and to be straightforward about what we find. To free is have the ability to live through these feelings. Let them flow through you. Let them go.









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