AMEN DUNES Love DELUXE Limited CLEAR VINYL Sacred Bones #25/300 - Cowboy Worship

$

85

Amen Dunes - Love

(#25 of 300 Deluxe Limited Edition)

DELUXE Limited Edition LP. Hand-numbered #25/300.
Translucent (clear) vinyl.
Special limited edition hand-stamped wraparound cover with original Elvis photo.
Super-rare.

SEALED, MINT

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"Love"

Some artists' music gets more intricate as the years pass, while others, like Amen Dunes' Damon McMahon, pare it down to its essence. While 2011's sprawling Through Donkey Jaw suggested he could go in almost any direction on his next album, on Love he forgoes much of that woolliness — some of which ended up on the smaller-scale releases Ethio Covers and Spoiler — resulting in songs with a newfound clarity and serenity. The album begins with some of McMahon's most appealing music yet: “White Child” manages to be bold and eerie at the same time, tempering its punchy brass with trippy woodwinds and a melodic sensibility that evokes fellow travelers Epic Soundtracks and Greg Ashley. “Lonely Richard” might be the closest McMahon has come to a bona fide pop song, but its heavy reverb and droning violins help keep it weird. “Splits Are Parted,” meanwhile, captures the album's strange grace and yearning in McMahon's cries of “Oh, I could love you.” Love's pastoral excursions are simpler yet more sophisticated than what came before, but the album still boasts plenty of haze on the eight-minute title track and “Lilac in Hand,” which nods to and modernizes flower-child freedom. The wide-open drones that dominate these songs allow more details and nuances to come out, whether it's the layered backing vocals on “I Know Myself” or “Sixteen”'s carefully sketched portrait of youth, love, and loss. That said, Love also shows McMahon's way with towering sonics hasn't deserted him: “Green Eyes” creates an air of doomy majesty that makes it feel longer and more imposing than two and a half minutes. The album's more polished feel extends to how well blended and balanced it is; the dense weirdness of Love's lone rocker, “I Can't Dig It,” enhances the alluring drift of songs like “Rocket Flare” and “Everybody Is Crazy.” This is easily some of McMahon's prettiest and most accessible music, and it's also some of his finest. In its own simple, graceful way, Love adds more depth to the rest of Amen Dunes' work.

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AMEN DUNES:

Amen Dunes is the project of Damon McMahon, whose mix of folk, psychedelia, and atmospherics has drawn comparisons to Roky Erickson, Syd Barrett, Chris Knox, Suicide, and Royal Trux. A Philadelphia native and a former member of Inouk, McMahon issued an album under his own name, Mansions, in 2006. Later that same year he began recording as Amen Dunes, sequestering himself in a cabin in the Catskills and laying down songs that he never intended to release publicly. He moved to Beijing in 2007 and recorded intermittently, honing a dark, acoustic-based sound. In 2009 Locust Music issued his Catskills sessions as DIA, and McMahon returned to the U.S., settling in New York. A full-band version of Amen Dunes toured the States and Europe in 2009 and 2010. Sacred Bones released the Murder Dull Mind EP, a collection of songs from McMahon's time in China, in 2010, and in January of the next year McMahon began recording Amen Dunes' second album, Through Donkey Jaw, which was released in August 2011. The following year, Amen Dunes returned with the Ethio Covers 7“, which reworked Ethiopian pop songs. The Spoiler, a limited-edition, vinyl-only collection of pieces from 2009 to 2011, arrived in 2013 via McMahon's Perfect Lives imprint. The simply named Love, which featured collaborations with Iceage's Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, Colin Stetson, and members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, was released in 2014. Early the following year saw the release of the Cowboy Worship EP, which McMahon described as a companion piece to Love and featured a cover of Tim Buckley's ”Song to the Siren.“