Freedom (SB 15 Year Anniversary Reissue)

On the surface, Freedom is a reflection on growing up, childhood friends who ended up in prison or worse, male identity, McMahon’s father, and his mother, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the beginning of recording.

The characters that populate the musical world of Freedom are a colorful mix of reality and fantasy: father and mother, Amen Dunes, teenage glue addicts and Parisian drug dealers, ghosts above the plains, fallen surf heroes, vampires, thugs from Naples and thugs from Houston, the emperor of Rome, Jews, Jesus, Tashtego, Perseus, even McMahon himself. Each character portrait is a representation of McMahon, of masculinity, and of his past.

Yet, if anything, these 11 songs are a relinquishing of all of them through exposition; a gradual reorientation of being away from the acquired definitions of self we all cling to. The music, as a response or even a solution to the album’s darker themes, is tough and joyous, rhythmic and danceable; a true NYC street record.

Sacred Bones is now repressing Amen Dunes’ critically acclaimed breakthrough record Freedom in a bunch of new colors in celebration of the label’s 15th year anniversary.

Listen

Tracklist

01. Intro
02. Blue Rose
03. Time
04. Skipping School
05. Calling Paul the Suffering
06. Miki
08. Dora
09. Satudarah
10. Believe
11. Dracula
12. Freedom
13. L.A.