Freedom

On every album, Damon McMahon aka Amen Dunes has transformed, and Freedom is the project's boldest leap. The themes are darker than on previous Amen Dunes albums, but it's a darkness sublimated through grooves. The music, as a response or even a solution to the darkness, is tough and joyous, rhythmic and danceable. It's a sound never heard before on an Amen Dunes record, but one that was always asking to emerge. Eleven songs span a range of emotions, from contraction to release and back again. 'Blue Rose' and 'Calling Paul the Suffering' are pure, ecstatic dance songs. 'Skipping School' and 'Miki Dora' are incantations of a mythical heroic maleness and its illusions. 'Freedom' and 'Believe' offer a street tough's future-gospel exhalation, and the funk-grime grit of 'L.A.' closes the album, projecting a musical hint of things to come.