Friday Cover Up - Going Greek In The Dunes

I know it's been out a whiles, but I didn't feel like searching for a cover, but wanted to provide one, and these are damned sweet. Earlier this year Amen Dunes put out the Ethio Covers 7", three tracks of Ethiopiques songs culled from unnamed tapes. After hearing these songs coming each night from his neighbor’s room upstairs, he decided to learn the tracks note for note and replicate the full band’s sound through the Amen Dunes lens, overdubbing all the instruments and vocals. It ends up sounding like Amen Dunes really, albeit somewhat happier, like being caught in a prism hit by mid-afternoon sunlight, before being thrown in a muddy ditch. That actually sounds rather pleasant to me...


You can still grab this from Sacred Bones and probably your nearest and dearest record stores. Grab it from the source here.

Amen Dunes - Ethio Song

Enjoy your weekend people!!!

Donkey Jaw In The Dunes

Seeing as the past few days has had me delving into some back catalogue stuff, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk about this record that has been slaying me all over again the past couple weeks. When Damon McMahon AKA Amen Dunes first came onto the scene, I was a little nonplussed. Unlike my first impressions of John Maus (that I didn't "get" it), the New Yorker just didn't grab me the way that other psych bands did. I appreciated some of his efforts - I was an immediate fan of 'Two Thousand Islands' and a couple other tracks off 2009's DIA - but I thought that Amen Dunes were going to be one of those bands that lots of people dug, but I didn't. It happens.


But then Through Donkey Jaw happened. When Sacred Bones put this out, as you can guess I didn't jump all over it like a virginal teen. I still felt that, whilst McMahon could straddle genres like a cowboy astride a rampant bull, he sometimes got swept away by the power of his ambitions - or even trampled underneath them. Not so here. The chopping and changing from drone to fuzzed out psych to intricate guitar meltdowns to falsetto soirees. McMahon's vocals transcend here, yet such confidence is evident across the board. His new-found band have helped to graft flesh on the bones, but truth be told they are only augmenting what is clearly inherent here. McMahon, and therefore Amen Dunes, are getting better with time. The erraticism fits within the paradigm of the band aesthetic now, much more controlled than its scattershot predecessors.

It's funny how much of an about-turn Through Donkey Jaw has been for me. If you haven't checked it out, you are doing yourself a major disservice. You can grab the record from Sacred Bones here.

Amen Dunes - Baba Yaga
Amen Dunes - Jill

Swilling Children Brings Devastating Results...

Ace record label Swill Children are releasing two great 7"s.

First up is a split between Brooklyn's Hunters and Montreal's Dead Wife. The A Side has already received the star treatment - what with Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner on mixing duties and Smashing Pumpkin James Iha in the producer's chair - and the sounds are electrifying, really grinding and brutal, whilst the B Sides keep it lo-fi, with tape deck explosions and crackly noise. I like both bands - Hunters' 'Deadbeat' is the pick of the tracks (their EP can be grabbed here), but Dead Wife offer a real sense of Riot Grrl gone awry that tickles the degraded punk soul that inhabits us all.


The second 7" is just exciting. W-H-I-T-E (White Horses In Technicolour Everywhere), otherwise known as Cory Thomas Hanson, has carved a slice of reverb-drenched ethereal brilliance. Really, 'Fountain' is an amazingly catchy track, due in no small part by Hanson's soaring vocal harmony, and combined with that insistent drum beat, the song cascades over you, drowning you in its watery ecstasies. The B-Side is just as good, with a remix by hype darlings Amen Dunes, and this is just as good, setting the track on a different spatial plane altogether. 'Fountain' is actually the single of upcoming LP Twin Tigers, an album that Im eagerly awaiting...

You can grab both of these release at the Swill Children store. Im massively impressed, and cant help but think that all three of these acts are going to shake things up this year.

Hunters - Deadbeat
Dead Wife - RX From Dr Gay
W-H-I-T-E - Fountain