New York-based artist Damon McMahon, better known as Amen Dunes, has announced his new album Death Jokes, out May 10, 2024 via Sub Pop Records. To mark the occasion, he’s also shared the project’s lead single ‘Purple Land’.

“'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,” said McMahon.

“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.”

The LP marks McMahon’s first since 2018’s Freedom. He fought illness for most of 2020, and throughout his stint of poor health, he struggled to find collaborators who understood his newfound artistic trajectory.

Following a relocation to upstate New York from Los Angeles after the birth of his child, McMahon found solace in the small number of collaborative sessions which worked. Jazz bassist Sam Wilkes appears on a trio of songs, producers Christoffer Berg and Kwake Bass provide tracks on several others, while sessions with Panoram and Money Mark also ended up in the final version of Death Jokes.

Pre-oder Amen Dunes upcoming full-length via this link.