FREEDOM – the fifth album from Amen Dunes (aka New York songwriter Damon McMahon) – is first and foremost a study of desperate men.

In a rare interview with Aquarium Drunkard, Damon described the album as “a relinquishing of self through an exploration of self”. It’s an obtuse way of saying the loose character sketches that make up the album are representative of his own masculine ID and the ritualistic casting-off of these notions of a male sense of self.

The men in Freedom’s 11 songs are repressed, primitive beings obsessed primarily with themselves, but Damon’s lens never becomes judgemental or condescending. His own sense of understanding is never compromised, and every character feels lived-in and realistic in a profoundly human way.

The listener is encouraged to make up their own mind about the subjects – from the problematic titular character of ‘Miki Dora’ to Damon’s own father on ‘Calling Paul The Suffering’. Damon is simply providing a framework for them in these expansive songs to do so.

As dizzying as Freedom’s scope can be (multiple characters punctuate every song), Damon sees himself in all of these characters. And he uses them as conduits to explore his own past in detail; his troubled relationship with his father and masculinity the two most obvious subjects.

Damon’s career to date has been as idiosyncratic as one of his song subjects, flipping between astral folk and more electronic textures with relative ease. Freedom is comfortably his most cohesive collection to date, blending his folkier impulses of the past with a newfound sense of urgency.