What's a musician supposed to do when making music stops being fun? Worn out after years of performing in Brooklyn, Damon MacMahon had seen his first band rise and fall within the span of its first album; his solo debut as a folk artist was tepidly received. MacMahan found solace in isolation, as he first laid down a series of experimental recordings in a Catskills cabin, then brought them with him as he moved into his Beijing apartment. There, he'd rework his music into the debut album of Amen Dunes, his current project. He's just followed it with an intensely introspective record called Through Donkey Jaw.
Looking inward rarely produces immediate answers, and the frustrated ambivalence is readily apparent in "Baba Yaga," a morning meditation of soft guitar and down-mixed bass that's slowly jarred from its moorings by droning and dissonance. Throughout the song, MacMahon alternates between indecipherable mumbles and indecipherable wails. But even when he can be heard clearly — as when he shouts, "You know that I / I lie" — he's hard to read, moving from relief to resignation within a single sentence.
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