Damon & Naomi – False Beats and True Hearts
Release date: May 9, 2011
Damon & Naomi celebrate their 25th year as performers together this year, and nothing displays that celebratory spirit more than False Beats and True Hearts, their first album of new recordings in four years. An album of lush possibility and depth, FB&TH fuses the skill of music veterans with the fervor of artists continuing to create at the top of their craft.
More Details
Following their darkly introspective Within These Walls (2007) with the reissue of the first Damon & Naomi record, More Sad Hits, a retrospective of their mid-career highlights (The Sub Pop Years), and, perhaps most notably, rereleases of all three seminal Galaxie 500 albums, there’s been a lot of looking back. It’s therefore appropriate that the first song off FB&TH is “Walking Backwards,” an ode to the joy of nostalgia and warmth of reflection. The song, and indeed, much of the album, is cross stitched by Michio Kurihara’s elegant guitar playing – a thick and resonating psych sound that has been a part of Damon & Naomi’s music since their collaboration with the Japanese band Ghost. The album is unexpectedly upbeat and strident; while lyrics portray true introspection, the melodies are ambitious and far-reaching. Naomi’s new passion for piano playing circles the album like a starry night, capturing the vitality found in the finest Plastic Ono Band recordings. Like their best material, it’s the sincerity and necessity of their expression that is the most striking. With False Beats and True Hearts, Damon & Naomi offer an essential document of what brings listeners to music in the first place – emotion, identification and beauty.
Damon & Naomi – More Sad Hits
A year after Galaxie 500 dissolved, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang returned to producer Kramer’s studio and recorded this album of psychedelic break-up songs.
Damon & Naomi – Earth is Blue
Their label, 20/20/20, is named after the seventies game Careers, where you are given sixty points to space out between three goals in life; Fame, Fortune and Happiness. Balancing yourself over a variety of interests provides the greatest opportunity for intellectual growth, doesn’t it? Nothing proves that more than The Earth Is Blue, Damon & Naomi’s first album of new material in five years.
More Details
Informed by their various experiences, both traveling the world and listening to and reading the greatest of human achievements, Damon & Naomi have created an album of worldly beauty and individual intimacy. The songs are smart and perceptive without forgoing a wide-eyed wonder at the many things there are to experience and learn. In addition to the contributions of Kurihara, trumpeter Greg Kelley and soprano saxophonist Bhob Rainey of Boston’s nmperign add some deli-cate brass.
Updating…