Interview: Amen Dunes explains what “Love” means (2014)

The following interview with Amen Dunes singer/songwriter Damon McMahon was originally published in 2014 in No Clue magazine, which went on permanent hiatus in 2015. I resurrected it here for posterity, because I loved this conversation with the artist and I still love this album.

“Love,” by Amen Dunes, is about addiction of different kinds: love as a loss of self, as both it and substance abuse have ways of eclipsing the self. It is a collection of songs on regaining that lost sense of self, after the dissolution of a romantic relationship or after getting clean. Brooklyn, New York-based singer/songwriter Damon McMahon projects his mournful vibrato as a means of self-empowerment, amplifying at once a great capacity for love and an ability to wisely see beyond its torpid haze.

The third full-length Amen Dunes album is titled so succinctly, but is so loaded with meaning and near-endless potential for interpretation, that I had the novel idea to ask the artist — whose vocal exertions ooze intimacy, the mark of one who has truly come into his own — what his songs mean to him. McMahon has commonly related that he intended to make an album that is “unencumbered and honest about love,” to pull himself out of the artist’s self-centered/self-aggrandizing/self-effacing vortex and swing his axe at universality: to make “something useful for the masses.” It is in this spirit I decided to approach our conversation, in the dimly lit courtyard outside of Montreal’s Casa Del Popolo, where he performed recently as part of the Suoni Per Il Popolo festival. (Appropriate, since Montreal is where McMahon did much of this album’s recording, with help from members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and experimental saxophonist Colin Stetson.)

Natasha Young: I’ve been listening to “Love” incessantly since it came out last month, and what I’ve wanted most to ask you about, since reading other interviews you’ve given, is this theme of you wanting to create music that is more relatable, less alienated, than your previous work, like Through Donkey Jaw. So what I’d like to have you do is give a close reading of a few of your own songs, instead of me projecting my opinions or interpretations to your listeners.

Damon McMahon: Sure! I’m into that. It’s tricky, because I like close readings, but sometimes you don’t want to share too much. I realize that some people actually do like what I do, which I didn’t realize before. I couldn’t internalize it for a long time. If people get something out of this, you might as well maximize your purpose on this planet. So I wanted to make a record that was more open emotionally — not necessarily a record that would sell more; not that kind of accessibility. But something more outward as opposed to inward. Generous. I just realized that the artists I really admire do that, and I didn’t have enough of that, so I wanted to try to do the opposite. I think [my music] has always been transparent; but love, in a way, that word is the most commonplace, pedestrian word around. I was talking mostly about devotional love, selfless love, and I was looking at musicians I really admired who had that. For this record in particular, I was looking at Marvin Gaye, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane; people who were onto something bigger than their simple songs, who were genuinely connected to some kind of universal thing. I admire that practice, and “Love” described that, and it also described my purpose as a musician: I think music is devotional, as a practice.

I also thought, “Love” is the most “fuck you” title you could possibly have. It’s so easy for people who don’t think too much to criticize. It’s so easy for people to misunderstand, which I think is fun. I like people misunderstanding me. It’s also the most subversive thing, because it’s so easy to be punk rock, or harsh, or super weird. It’s hard to be hard and call your album “Love.” That was my goal. It could be so cheesy or watered-down, but I wanted to be bold with this title.

Young: I sensed a theme of resisting self-destructive tendencies in some of these songs, too — which, I suppose, also applies to your concept of devotional love, selflessness, and opening up to people.

McMahon: That’s been a goal of mine, and it is self-preservation. Definitely, this album is about not self-destructing. The other albums are sort of about self-destructing. I don’t want to live that way. This record was a way of actively not living that way, of giving myself a cardinal direction. And if you think about it, if art, if music are really effective on you, it can probably be effective on other people. If it’s genuinely cathartic and very personal, it’s going to be more useful.

Young: To start off on these close readings of your songs, I’d love to start with my favorite, “Splits Are Parted.” First of all, what does that phrase mean to you?

McMahon: I have no idea. (Laughs) But those are the lyrics that came out with the original melody, and I realized that you can’t fuck with that. It’s stupid to try and dress it up to look good, or sound good. I had all these cool titles for these songs, but then I thought, “No. Just be honest.” That’s what came out when I wrote it, so I’ve got to stick with that, or you’re going to dilute it. So, “Splits Are Parted,” I wrote that song in a really fertile period, years and years ago. That song was my beginning of searching for something higher; I was in a very bad, negative kind of behavior space, and this was my first attempt at writing something open and beautiful. It was my first redemptive song. This one is pretty straight about relationships: I made this record when I ended this longterm relationship, so the more straightforward songs are my way of dealing with it and processing it. It’s really simple, all that kind of bullshit thinking that you go through when you break up with someone, where you think it’ll work out. I was making fun of myself.

Young: Is that song more about the beginning or the ending of a relationship? It has a very romantic sound.

McMahon: No, no, it’s an ending. It’s about, “I could have loved you; maybe next time.” The end, the last verse, brings it back to me. All these songs are my ways of dealing with life: “Since I started going easy, things have all fell in line / I’ll never figure it out / Things come in time.” It’s semi-sarcastic, too. All these songs are like that, but they’re still genuine. The real masters are the ones who aren’t really consciously dropping these weirdly inverted post-modern, self-effacing references, from the perspective of a third self. I think it’s experientially interesting when an artist has multiple voices. Good art isn’t literal, or only rarely.

Young: Let’s talk about “Lilac In Hand.”

McMahon: “Lilac In Hand” is a euphemism for copping drugs. I try, in the vocals, to convey that it’s more than just the immediate image, but no one would know. Those lyrics sound kind of mundane, too, but “Cousin Betty” is this Spanish drug dealer woman; “Speed like an arrow,” “Come fetch me,” “I move like a shadow,” all those lyrics are about copping in New York. That was the simplest lyric to convey that. I don’t advocate using narcotics, but it’s some kind of exaltation, getting out of yourself, traveling. It’s beautiful but it’s got its consequences. It’s part of the whole theme of extinguishing self. Drugs are a cheap way of letting go of ego, of your body. They’re a bad way of doing that, but it’s a version. That song is also our version of salsa music, which, no one knows this really, but salsa was this street thing. We wanted to do gothic, Death In June salsa music. All those salsa players were, like, New York drug people, so that’s why I went with that sound for the drug song.

Young: How about “White Child”?

McMahon: That song is more straightforward and literal. I wrote that one a while ago, about feeling left out, uncomfortable in your own skin; everything not working out right. People have been asking me to talk about this but it’s kind of hard, so I came up with this idea that the album has this theme of “cowboy worship.” Cowboys fail gracefully. “White Child” is a naïve song about failing well.

Young: Next I’d like to hear more about the title track, “Love.”

McMahon: That one’s my favorite. Normally I don’t take a long time to write lyrics — the melody comes out, the song comes out, and then I just tighten it up. But that was the first time in my life I’ve spent fuckin’ time… I spent about two weeks straight on those lyrics, writing drafts and drafts and drafts. I wrote “Love” right when this relationship ended, during the two weeks that it ended. “Love” is the heaviest of all the songs. It’s about a million things; superficially, it’s about a relationship unraveling, but then there’s another instance of making fun of yourself for your own self-pity, and plays with this model-in-love song; there are all these lines about her in there. “He loved me, but it’s over now.” And, this is self-empowering, medicinal for me, and my favorite lyric on the whole record, I think: “You’ll feel me pass, like a stag in the grass, even when I’m not around.” But then, the song is also about being a musician, of having something lasting to leave behind if I die. It’s about dealing with failure, talking about these things that sustain me: Bob Dylan, cowboy movies, art in general, drugs, music; they all sustain me.

Young: “Lonely Richard” is probably one of the most accessible-sounding tracks on the record, especially with that chorus with the surprisingly platitudinous line “Have yourself a good time” —

McMahon: It’s self-aggrandizing in a way, like some hip-hop thing. That line is my ultimate abstraction of normalcy. I was singing that line for me. What I mean is, it’s not literal. I don’t even know what the fuck that line means. That’s a real sarcastic lyric. If you read the rest of the lyrics, it’s all subjects that are too awkward to really talk about, so the only way to fucking deal with that is to tell yourself to have a good time. It’s kind of a “fuck you” mantra. It doesn’t mean “Have yourself a good time,” and it feels like it means something else. That song’s strange to talk about, because it felt like it was really delivered to me from some other place, more so than normal. All of the lyrics are about knowing myself, communication with other places. When I play music is the only time I can really meditate; that song is autobiographical, about that process in my life. It means what it sounds like, not what the words literally say. But when you make music or art, it’s not yours anymore. I’m psyched that people have their own experience with it. If it’s interpreted as “Have yourself a good time,” that’s cool. It’s so complicated trying to explain my relationship to it, I couldn’t begin to.

Young: Of course, any writer’s relationship to their own phrasing is intensely subjective and loaded with personal meaning and references to your own experience. Let’s wrap up with another song expressly about knowing yourself — obviously, “I Know Myself.”

McMahon: “I Know Myself” is also about the relationship that I was in, sort of literally. It’s also self-preservation: “I don’t need you anymore.” It’s taking a dig at her, but not because I want to take a dig at her, but because it’s helpful to me, as a way of processing hurt feelings. Those lyrics start to mean what they sound like, too. That’s why I refer to hip-hop, and Bob Dylan does it too, as does punk rock. There’s some kind of art form about saying, “I’m the champ, I don’t need you.” You listen to a song like that on the radio and you feel it, too. When I listen to Aretha Franklin, I feel her self-empowerment. It’s good for me, it’s good for the listener.

Young: Maybe that sense of “We’re all alone together” is what makes this album more accessible.

McMahon: Totally. That’s the vibe.