Amen Dunes shares “Round the World,” off his forthcoming album Death Jokes, available May 10th via Sub Pop. Along with the news Dunes AKA:Damon McMahon announces new North American tour dates, including stops in Seattle, Montreal, and Atlanta. “Round The World follows previous singles “Purple Land” and “Boys”. The video sees McMahon collaborating again with director Steven Brahms, who also directed the videos for Freedom’s “Believe” and “Miki Dora.”

“Round the World” began to take shape with McMahon recording a voice memo in winter 2019 as he sang along to an improvised piano arrangement. The vocal came almost in full and was based around nine minutes of a constantly changing piano arrangement which took weeks to notate. McMahon couldn’t easily perform the piano part and tried to hire two different pianists to record it, but they weren’t able or willing. What first sounds like a heartbreak ballad — “Made up my mind/ I give up on you” — later warps into a ghostly dirge — “This world’s on fire/ Nothing seems true.” The haunted refrains of “round the world, round the world” and “let it rattle, let it rattle” sounded prophetic a few months later, when the pandemic took over around the world. The rest of the song features numerous samples, including a collection of Chilean protest recordings from the coup in 1973, a mash-up of Coil with Bill Monroe, Fairlight CMI string and horn, a slowed-down UK Garage track, and others. Country and folk music subtly appear throughout Death Jokes, and this song’s melody comes almost directly, and unconsciously, from the traditional song “There’s a Hole in the Bucket.”

One afternoon in July 2022 there was a massive thunderstorm in Woodstock, during which McMahon wrote and recorded the album’s title track, “Poor Cops,” and the final two minutes of “Round the World” all three of which contain the most significant samples on the record and speak most directly to the meaning of the album, which McMahon recently reflected on in the statement that follows:

Everybody wants everything to come so easily.
Everybody wants to be comfortable, but they’re so uncomfortable.
We have so much of everything that it means nothing.
We take so much that we get nothing at all.
Some of us find a way to have our voices heard, but most of us are just being used.
You think they’re hearing you, but they’re not.
You say be yourself, but you won’t break the rules.
Poor cops, don’t let them tell you what to do.
You would punch a lot harder if you stopped being so cynical.
Fuck when you fuck, punch when you punch, love when you say you love.
We talk about wanting inclusion, but we shout about it while we hide in our cells.
We talk about being manipulated, but we do so using their methods and means.
They want us to feel like we are heard, so they encourage us to attack each other.
They tell us self-obsession is self-expression.

You say no one cares about you, but you don’t care about them.
My songs are all death jokes, and will long outlive me.
They remind me not to take myself too seriously.
I barely wrote them anyway. So who am I kidding?
And when I break the rules and speak honestly to you because I love you,
that joke might get me killed too.
There is more that’s tragic than what you think is tragic.
Wake up, live in love.
You say life is hard, but it’s a joke.
The world is not about to end, in fact it’s just beginning.

Amen Dunes 2024 Tour Dates

Wed. May 8 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Fri. May 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Bellwether
Wed. May 15 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
Mon. July 1 – Paris, FR @ Trabendo
Wed. July 3 – Berlin, DE @ Gretchen
Fri. July 5 – Roskilde, DK @ Roskilde Festival
Sun. July 7 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
Tue. July 9 – London, UK @ KOKO
Fri. July 19 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival
Tue. Aug. 13 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Wed. Aug. 14 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
Fri. Aug 16 – Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl
Thu. Sep. 5 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
Fri. Sep. 6 – Washington D.C. @ Black Cat
Sun. Sep. 8 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
Tue. Sep. 10 – Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater
Wed. Sep. 11 – Austin, TX @ Empire Garage
Fri. Sep. 13 – Denver, CO @ Summit
Tue. Sep. 17 – Toronto, ON @ The Concert Hall
Wed. Sep. 18 – Montreal, QC @ Le Studio

Pre-order Death Jokes by Amen Dunes HERE