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“Have yourself a good time.” The chorus to “Lonely Richard,” the standout track off Amen Dunes’ 2014 album Love, was a curveball when it came out. It was an earnest, declarative statement from a musical project that, up until then, had made its name off of unhinged, lo-fi, psychedelic folk—a spacious and strikingly anthemic departure. Four years later, though, listening to the new Amen Dunes album Freedom, that chorus feels like a blueprint. A lustrous psych-pop album recorded in Electric Lady Studio and produced by Chris Coady (the man behind Beach House’s recent discography and last year’s Slowdive reunion record), Freedom does, in fact, have a good time—even as the project’s helmer Damon McMahon continues to grapple with his relationship to family, masculinity, and God. McMahon reflects on that period preceding Love—when recordings he’d made in his basement suddenly gained a cult following online—warily. “Evil,” he succinctly states, when asked how he’d characterize the project’s persona from that time. “I’m kind of being facetious, but it was! It was like me purging my shadow self. There’s a lot of anger in that music.” But around the time of Love, which resulted from a breakup, McMahon says he started something new. “It’s a devotional record, really,” he says. “It’s like, I’m shifting toward a different kind of love.” He started craving more extroversion and spirituality in his songs, thinking of the way they related to his newfound audience, and opened up the world of his music as a result.
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BY AUSTIN BROWN
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PHOTOS BY MICHAEL SCHMELLING
