One really good new record
A conversation with Alex Amen
There are always absolutes. There are good albums, there are bad albums. There are fine albums, there are mediocre ones. Then there are albums that reach their warm, alive hands into your body and feel around for your heart. Upon finding that soft beating wild animal inside your chest, only then does the album decide to do the unthinkable: lay down and stay awhile.
I’m talking about Alex Amen’s album, Sun of Amen.
There’s something a bit embarrassing about loving someone’s music and then talking to them as a normal person, which they are, but the problem is that, when I love something, I’m not. Maybe Amen didn’t notice, or care, when we talked. The interview, below, is our conversation. We talk about his influences, growing up in Texas, New York, Art Lown, the internet, Robert Caro, and what a good record can do.
Sun of Amen is an elemental album. It’s got a concrete feeling of place and person, like Hemingway, while driving right into the heart of things. When Amen sings:
She walks along a country road that winds up through the hills
Thinks of days yet to come, and things that never will
And she feels herself growing older as she listens through the trees
To the sound of the wind rushing past the bend down around
Her cabin but the sea
What we get is a specific world, one that you can feel, so the gravel of that country road is right under your feet and you’re moving, breathing in the salt of the sea air while the wind blows your hair. You’re not listening to the song anymore, you’re right in the thick of it.
And you stay there right until the last note of the last track, “Lonely People.” The words end, but the music stays on, building and crashing, wave after wave, not until it’s over, but until it ends.
I hope y’all love this album as much as me. If you do, tell me about your experience with it.
If you want more new music, there’s a link at the bottom of this newsletter to a playlist of new music (all from this year) that’s available to paid subscribers.
Listen to Sun of Amen
If you like: John Denver, drinking beers near rivers, Wendell Berry, small towns, peaches
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / Qobuz / Other streaming services
The interview
What are you listening to right now?
That’s a hard question, because I was just in the studio for two and a half weeks, then playing shows, so I’m listening to a lot of silence right now.
Totally fair.
Before that, I guess spring, or late winter, was Stevie Wonder and Gordon Lightfoot. That was the thing I was really going for.
Why?
I used to have a roommate who was obsessed with Stevie Wonder and he would blare Stevie Wonder early in the morning. So, I kind of hated Stevie Wonder for a long time, because it ruined it for me.
And then, in Nashville, this older songwriter and I were talking and he mentioned this song, Village Ghetto Land and how Stevie Wonder used this synth to mimic a string arrangement. And that song came on and it blew my mind, you know? That’s how it is. It takes one song to crack the wall of an artist, then the flood, if there’s enough depth to them. Then you get washed in their stuff. So Village Ghetto Land was that for me with Stevie Wonder. I always knew Stevie, and Gordon Lightfoot, were legends, these gigantic artists and that they’re that way for a reason. I just knew there would be a time when it hit. And they both hit at the same time.
Are there other albums or songs that have stuck with you for awhile?
Where to start? One of the early records that hooked me was Everybody Knows This is Nowhere by Neil Young. And Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band record. Abbey Road. The Beatles. John Denver’s Back Home Again. I’ve always loved that one. Bill Withers, Still Bill.
These records are all so timeless. They’re kind of like these friends that always have some good insight, you know? For whatever state you’re in. You circle back around and you’re like, oh yea, I never thought about it that way. I think a good record has that. It has different things to say for the different seasons of your life.
Did you grow up listening to these records?
No, I wasn’t exposed to a lot of music as a kid. It was mainly the radio when I was growing up. A lot of pop country and pop radio. My mom liked Michael Jackson, she appreciated The Beatles, and my dad liked some types of jazz and Aerosmith, whatever his era was, you know? It wasn’t like other people, where I’d go into their childhood houses and there would be vinyl stacks of every Carole King record or Tower of Power, where you can tell those people are music heads. I didn’t grow up with that. Not until middle school when I discovered indie music. And then I realized in high school that there was a whole world of music that’s cool. That’s concerned with art and saying something. It’s not just one genre.
Is that when you started playing music?
I started playing music when I was four years old. I took piano lessons, because I always gravitated toward music. If there was a keyboard anywhere, apparently I would always go over to it and bang on it. I guess that happened enough times that they took the hint and put me in piano lessons. I loved it.
I feel like that’s rare, as a kid, to love piano lessons. It’s usually the opposite.
There’s the classic tale of people whose parents see value in music so they want their kids to play music, maybe because they can’t and it’s something they’ve always wanted to do. So they stick them into music lessons and maybe the kid isn’t musically included or maybe they don’t have that inner desire to do it.
“I think a good record has that. It has different things to say for the different seasons of your life.”
For me, it was just one of those things that I loved. It was just something I did. I think because it wasn’t a big part of the culture of my family, or the people I was around, it was my own little thing. It was just mine. I didn’t have my mom or dad forcing me to listen to these types of records or having the expectation of, oh we want you to be like Billy Joel. They were like, well if it makes you happy, then do it.
There’s part of me that regrets that they weren’t harder on me and really pushed me. I probably could’ve been a child prodigy on piano or something. I know how to play piano and I played throughout my entire childhood. I still play a lot, but it’s a little more creative and a little less…
Virtuosic?
Like those kids who went to jazz school.
I’m happy where I’m at musically. I just have to be grateful that all the things happened the way they did.
What do your parents think now?
They didn’t like it when I dropped out of college to do music. They did not like that at all. They’ve definitely been worried about me for a long time. But when I signed a publishing deal with Rick Rubin, I think they were like, maybe he isn’t crazy.
I played some shows in Europe last year and when I was in Paris, I signed a deal with ATO to do this record. I remember calling my dad and I said, I told you it was gonna be alright.
It was a long road. It still is. I’m not shopping for a brownstone apartment in New York or anything like that. It’s a long road to even pay your rent with music. I definitely feel good at where things are right now.
You grew up in Texas. How did that affect your music? Does the culture of the place show up for you?
Being in Texas gave me an appreciation for country music in a way that other people don’t get. It really only got popular again in the last few years, but in Texas, that music is always around. Some of it’s terrible, a lot of it is terrible, but some of it is amazing. I think being exposed to that, not just being exposed, but understanding it happened because of Texas. Like, I love Hawaiian slack key guitar, but I don’t fully understand it in the way a kid who grew up in Kauai would understand it. I think that way about country music. That understanding of the place that it comes from and growing up in that place gave me a certain level of depth to the understanding. You can’t get that out of somebody. My family’s been in Texas for a long time. It’s just natural. To me, it’s the easiest type of music to play and sing. It’s very natural to sing country music and sing old Hank Williams songs or Willie Nelson songs. It probably comes from the fact that Hank Williams and Willie Nelson’s families have been in the South for a long time and for Willie, in Texas. It’s like our ancestors are the same, they went through the same thing. Ate the same food, were under the same part of the sky.
It’s hard to find culture nowadays, because of how globalized and internet-ified—I don’t know if that’s a word—everything is.
And you’re in New York now.
I’m in New York.
Which is maybe the opposite, in some ways, of Texas.
Yea, in some ways. The thing that’s great about Texas is there’s good community in Texas. And of everywhere I’ve lived outside of Texas, I felt that New York has the best community. In that way, it’s very similar in the sense that there is a culture here, there’s a feeling here, in a similar way that there’s its own feeling when you’re in Texas.
“I think that way about country music…It’s like our ancestors are the same, they went through the same thing. Ate the same food, were under the same part of the sky.”
There’s also a certain level of connection that exists here that I didn’t feel when I lived in Los Angeles. And I damn sure didn’t feel it when I lived in Washington. I don’t know if that’s a West Coast thing. If you think about it, all of the people, all the weirdos, that crossed the ocean, didn’t think that was extreme enough and just kept pushing and pushing, until they got to the end of the world in that respect. There’s a reason why so much comes out of California, right? Technology, innovation, culture, movies, all of that stuff comes out of California because that type of person pushes the limit. But I also think it goes hand-in-hand with a very individualistic approach to life and a certain level of isolation. I definitely felt that in Los Angeles. And when I came to New York last year for a show, I just felt like it was more my speed. I like to be around people. I like to walk everywhere. I like to feel like I’m a part of a community, not just in my own world.
It’s different from Texas, but I feel more at home here than I ever did in Los Angeles.
Do you feel like New York has changed anything for you musically? When I moved to New York, I found I listened to music in a different way. I lost listening to it in the car, but gained listening on the subway and walking around. It changed the tone of what I was listening to.
You hit the nail on the head. Our generation isn’t active music listeners much anymore. We don’t have a hi-fi system that we sit in front of with our friends. I always think about how weird, and cool, and funny, that is. It’s so different. Like, so-and-so just dropped a new record, everyone come over and we’ll make dinner and sit down and listen to it, like it’s a movie or something. We don’t have that nowadays, which is a shame.
“It’s hard to find culture nowadays, because of how globalized and internet-ified—I don’t know if that’s a word—everything is.”
I’m sure back then if people could’ve been their own DJ in the car or when they walked around, they would have been. It’s nice, it’s new. But it’s a different thing. It’s more individualistic. But it’s how we listen to music. So, being in the car, driving around, listening to music is a very different experience than walking around and listening to music, or being on a subway. You listen to different types of music and some of that feeds into the music you make.
The environment you’re in is gonna affect the feeling of the music you’re creating. So, being here, I’ve already written a lot of songs about the feelings that I feel here. And they’re a different flavor.
It was one of the reasons I moved here. I’d been on the West Coast for 10 years or so. I needed something else. I watched this thing about Ernest Hemingway and they were talking about how he was into travel, because when you travel you’re somewhere new and everything is heightened. Smell, taste, experience, people, everything’s heightened. I’m feeling that right now with New York. Everything is new, fresh. As an artist, that’s inspiring.
And you’re about to have summer in New York, which is the best time.
It’s hot, though, it’s very hot.
A different kind of hot.
It’s so good. Maybe a similar type of hot to Houston. Sticky, humid.
You cover an Art Lown song on the album. How did you choose that song? What’s your relationship to his music?
A lot of people were DMing me on social media to say I remind them of Art Lown. I hadn’t listened to him at the time, this was a couple of years ago. Enough people said that that I was like, okay, who is this person? Then I listened to the record and I was upset that they fried his vocals so much. They do that distorted thing. At first, I didn’t like it. I thought they were great songs, but whatever. Then I found myself returning to that record over and over. I started to love that they fried his vocals. That record is just a perfect record. It’s a perfect record.
It’s very mysterious. His life is very mysterious. I think that nowadays there’s not a lot of mystery anymore.
Back in the day, I’m sure that Neil Young was mysterious. In his time. Or, like, Joni Mitchell, or fill-in-the-blank person was probably mysterious to a certain degree. But not now. You can dig into everything and know what Neil Young ate for breakfast when he was recording whatever song. You know, it’s just kind of stupid in that way.
What’s so cool about Art Lown is that there’s so much mystery. He’s basically a mythical figure. So that song, I just related to it.
Townes Van Zandt has this thing where he talks about how there’s certain songs he wishes he’d written. I always thought that was a funny thing to say. I think I understand what he means now. Sometimes a song is so personal. It’s saying exactly what I’m feeling. It’s so perfectly done and I feel it so intensely. That’s why I decided to cover it. I just felt it.
A lot of the record was made after a whole life. A whole relationship on the West Coast. A lot of the record is about heartbreak and losing things. Moving on. When I was making that record, I was sick of that feeling. I was sick of certain emotions. I was starting to have experiences that weren’t so heavy. It’s like that song. Just stop, you know? I’m done with it.
“There’s nothing in this record that’s there to be sold. No song was made to chart. No song was made to appease some system…The record is what it is.”
What about new music?
When I was in high school, Mac DeMarco was huge for me. I still think he makes great music. I was just on tour with the Folk Bitch Trio, I think they’re amazing. Haley Hendricks is great. Cameron Winter stuff is cool.
There’s so much space for everything and everybody, because we have these algorithms and have this personalized, catered thing. It’s not like I have to make an album like Cameron Winter, because it’s so popular. We’re not in that era of music anymore. We can all have our little camps.
But really for me it’s about, does somebody have something to say? Then I’m sold.
You said there were other artists and books that influenced you. What are those?
I love John Steinbeck. Mark Twain. I’ve been reading a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love American writers. I also read The Power Broker by Robert Caro. It took up 8 months of my life.
And then he did the LBJ series…
He moved to Texas, too, to study. That’s what I’m talking about. Robert Caro was trying to understand LBJ, but he felt like he couldn’t fully do it. So he moved to LBJ’s hometown and lived there with his wife for a long time. It’s like what I was saying. That your environment really shapes what you create.
What do you hope people feel with this record?
I think that it’d be nice if people walked away from the record feeling two things. One, if they could relate to it in any way. And two, I hope it feels real to them. I think we live in a time where so much stuff is engineered and constructed to be sold. There’s nothing in this record that’s there to be sold. No song was made to chart. No song was made to appease some system.
However well or bad it does will be what it is. The record is what it is.
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Thanks y’all. Have a great weekend.