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Feb 08, 2024 By Mark Redfern Photography by Michael Schmelling

Amen Dunes (aka Damon McMahon) has announced a new album, Death Jokes, and shared its first single, “Purple Land,” via a music video. He’s also announced some new tour dates. Death Jokes is due out May 10 via Sub Pop, his first album for the label. Check out the single below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover artwork, as well as the tour dates.

Death Jokes follows Amen Dunes’ acclaimed 2018 album, Freedom, which was released on Scared Bones, and his 2021 single, “Feel Nothing,” which featured British duo Sleaford Mods and was his first single for Sub Pop.

Death Jokes went through a long birthing process, with work starting in 2019. McMahon was beset by health issues in 2020, including COVID-19, and lost 30 pounds. In recent years his first child was born and he moved cross country from Los Angeles to Woodstock, NY. McMahon also struggled to find collaborators who could line up with his vision for the album. Eventually he ended up working with jazz bassist Sam Wilkes and producers Christoffer Berg (Fever Ray) and Kwake Bass (Tirzah, Dean Blunt), as well as doing sessions with Panoram and Money Mark. The final album includes samples sourced from YouTube videos, including standup routines from Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor.

Of the album’s first single, McMahon says in a press release: “‘Purple Land’ is one of the album’s interstitial character portraits: first of a child, then the narrator, and then of an empowered figure as they all navigate and find liberation from the disconnection and disenchantment of an uncertain world. It begins first as a song to my daughter about life on earth, offering platitudes, warnings, and guidance through its various stages, until it becomes a reflection on the narrator’s own uncertainties as he moves through the world, ending finally with a character Rhea Anne who exemplifies liberation from it all in a moment of simple reckless freedom, as the beat drops in the final minute of the song.”

Read our 2018 interview with Amen Dunes on Freedom.

Death Jokes Tracklist:

1. Death Jokes
2. Ian
3. Joyrider
4. What I Want
5. Rugby Child
6. Boys
7. Exodus
8. Predator
9. Solo Tape
10. Purple Land
11. I Don’t Mind
12. Mary Anne
13. Round the World
14. Poor Cops

Amen Dunes Tour Dates:

Wed. May 8 - San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Fri. May 10 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Bellwether
Wed. May 15 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
Mon. Jul. 1 - Paris, FR @ Trabendo
Wed. Jul. 3 - Berlin, DE @ Gretchen
Fri. Jul. 5 - Roskilde, DK @ Roskilde Festival
Sun. Jul. 7 - Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
Tue. Jul. 9 - London, UK @ KOKO

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