Amen Dunes' 'Death Jokes' Is a Discombobulated Thrill

Many of Damon McMahon's releases under the Amen Dunes moniker have been marked by a sense of musical and lyrical austerity. Even among the gauzy layers that wrapped 2011's Through Donkey Jaw or the sonic bubbles that simmered gently atop 2014's Love, McMahon's songwriting and production choices have felt, more often than not, like exercises in presenting "three chords and the truth." That changed with 2018's Freedom, which took McMahon's folk and rock tendencies and made them kaleidoscopic. Freedom had a patient swagger to it, with McMahon more willing than ever to turn a song on its axis. revealing new facets. The result was the most inviting Amen Dunes record to date, but deeper listening revealed an almost unbearable openness and honesty, especially lyrically. "Three chords and the truth" sounds rather simple until the truth is complicated. 

Amen Dunes' boisterous seventh full-length Death Jokes amplifies the complexity. In search of more artistic liberation after Freedom and keen to explore the electronic and hip-hop influences that pervaded his youth, McMahon turned his attention to synthesizers, drum machines and sampling to shake old habits and inhabit new sonic perspectives. If Freedom was Amen Dunes in technicolour, Death Jokes is a ray of light shot, sometimes uncontrollably, through a prism. These songs command attention in ways previous Amen Dunes offerings wouldn't dare, however fleeting that attention may be. 

While the newness of the electronic instrumentation shouldn't be overstated — many of these musical tools have made appearances on past Amen Dunes records to great effect — Death Jokes lives and dies by the success of their more liberal application in McMahon's production. The most gratifying element of Death Jokes is its relative unruliness in comparison to the more reserved compositions of McMahon's past. Rambunctious vocal samples quake under McMahon's own voice on "Ian," cracking the lyrical foundation McMahon has laid to reveal the conversations and perspectives of people past and present. 

The slowly increasing ecstasy of album standout "I Don't Mind" is due in part to the malleability of the drum machine. The tonal variety of the drum production balloons as the song builds its rhythmic layers. Once the track reaches its crest, the groove shifts entirely, making way for a calming coda.  

One result of the move to more rhythmic and textural electronic elements is an increased reliance on McMahon's singing as the primary vehicle for delivering melodic and emotive content. This is mostly to the record's detriment — Death Jokes has some of the least immediately memorable vocal performances in McMahon's discography. There are exceptions, like "Boys" or "Purple Land," which manage to marry the album's skittish sound design with McMahon's stoic croon. Otherwise, one is left wondering what Death Jokes may have been had McMahon left a little bit more space on his sonic collage for his vocal melodies to occupy.

For similar reasons, the segues on Death Jokes prove to be the highlights of McMahon's experimentation. "Joyrider," "Predator" and "Solo Tape" succeed because they are unencumbered by the weight of songwriting expectation. Unlike the fuller compositions, these interstitial tracks lean more on the side of musical vignettes. Their stories don't suffer from the pressure of inserting lyrical narrative or emotive vocals into sample-and-beat-based compositions. It's in this sense that Death Jokes is McMahon at his bravest as an instrumentalist and producer, but at his most discombobulated as a vocalist. McMahon's songwriting talents leave no doubt that these new idioms will soon be seamlessly integrated into the Amen Dunes vocabulary. In the meantime, Death Jokes is a worthwhile sputter on the journey there.