Amen Dunes (Damon McMahon) released his stellar, critically adored album, Freedom in early 2018.
Anchored by his warbly, emotionally volatile but clear-headed delivery, the album finds McMahon navigating a rocky relationship with his father, examining the toils of his mother’s terminal illness, and forging a path to self-preservation.
It’s an area he excels at by twisting the psychedelic folk-rock genre into something cerebral, almost as if the act of sticking around can provide a sense of self in the murky waters.
This is music well-lived — projecting despair skyward and just out of view. It’s a voice of reckoning, one that can be used for our own self-examinations.
Amen Dunes returns to San Francisco to headline August Hall on Thursday, January 10.
Opening for Amen Dunes is fellow Sacred Bones labelmate and Oakland-based artist SPELLLING (Chrystia Cabral). Cabral will be supporting Mazy Fly, her latest experimental collection of electronics, R&B and club beats. According to her Bandcamp profile, the record finds her “reflecting on the thresholds of human progress and longing for a new and better tomorrow.”
Amen Dunes, SPELLLING
August Hall
January 10, 2018
8:30pm, $20
