New York-dwelling troubadour Damon McMahon’s fourth album arrives on a vapour trail of praise for his well-regarded 2014 album, Love. Not one to shy away from a big, loaded title, McMahon follows up Love with Freedom, tackling troubled masculinity through a series of character studies and a mesmerising, still psych-indebted sound that has fleshed out even further. Witness Blue Rose, as close to a pop song as Amen Dunes have come.
Miki Dora, meanwhile, takes its name from an infamous pro surfer and con artist, and finds McMahon’s lackadaisical yet intense drawl addressing his younger skater self. Skipping School locates his own father as a kid, “in the alley, sniffing glue”. It’s not always men: McMahon’s mother, diagnosed with terminal cancer during the album’s recording, is the subject of Believe.
Songs such as Believe carry on the affinity Amen Dunes’ older music had with early Spiritualized or Mazzy Star. Much of Freedom, by contrast, finds the now close-cropped McMahon channelling Mike Skinner on his cover portrait and sounding more like an American take on Richard Ashcroft, with Blue Rose nearing a baggy beat. You can hear an Ashcroft-like cosmic tilt, too. In interviews, McMahon has said what he’s aiming for on this involving album is “a relinquishing of self through an exploration of self”.
