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CMU Approved
Approved: Amen Dunes
By Aly Barchi | Published on Thursday 22 May 2014
Around since 2006, Amen Dunes (who’s just the one mound of a man, Damon McMahon) has released three LPs to date, 2009’s cloistered ‘DIA’, 2011’s farther-reaching ‘Through Donkey Jaw’, and latterly ‘Love’, which coasted in on the wind last week.
A wide, rangy sprawl of labour, loss and longing, ‘Love’ has him curling his tongue around the most forlorn, the most worldly, the most faded, lonely and lovely songs. Though, rather than weighting you down, it more draws you into its cavernous, canyonous world, a world in which bright-burning torchlight tracks like ‘Rocket Flare’ and the woebegone ‘Lonely Richard’ co-exist in easy peace.
And lone wolfish and ‘one-man’ as ‘Love’ can sound, McMahon actually made it with a whole bunch of other musicians, from Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Dave Bryant and Efrim Menuck, to Colin Stetson (on sax), and Iceage’s Elias Bender Ronnenfelt, whose contributions slip, almost unnoticed, in amongst his own.
Amen Dunes plays live tonight at London’s Koko, supporting Mac DeMarco, and comes back to the capital on 3 Jun, to do the same with Wooden Shjips, only at the Electric Ballroom. And he’s appearing at Jabberwocky Festival, again in LDN, at ExCel on 15 Aug, and finally at Liverpool Psych Fest, in Liverpool, on 27 Sep.
Listen to all of ‘Love’ on Spotify now, or just buy it via Sacred Bones, because it’s good.
And this is ‘Love’ song ‘Lilac In Hand’:
