On his fifth album, Monarchs of the Spukhaus, Reno, Nevada-based popsmith singer-songwriter John Amadon follows up his critically-acclaimed releases, including 2011’s Seven Stars and 2013’s The Bursting Sheaf, with another collection of haunting melodies that make good bedfellows with easy-laid beats. Set for a June 12th release, the album once again finds Amadon enchanting you into his world of pop craft know-how.
Monarchs of the Spukhaus was recorded during lockdown with minimal participation from others. However, longtime collaborators from Seven Stars and The Bursting Sheaf, Scott McPherson (live and session drummer for acts including Beck, Elliott Smith, Neil Finn, M.Ward, She & Him, Bright Eyes, et.al) and William Slater, as well as Paul Brainard (Richmond Fontaine), help bring the album to life. While still in the vein of his previous collection of pop-rock offerings, Monarchs of the Spukhaus finds Amadon stepping out of his comfort zone, recording and mixing his own record for the first time in his career.
Moving to Reno from Portland, Oregon in the summer of 2017, Amadon started thinking about working on another record. But, as he admits, “I didn’t really have any notion of what the record could be, or what to write about. I also didn’t have the kind of frictions in my life anymore that gave me fodder for writing in the past.”
But, then the idea hit him, to make a Twin Peaks-inspired album. That’s when he thought up the initial idea for what would become Monarchs of the Spukhaus.
Over the next many months he wrote a bunch of songs revolving around Twin Peaks, which triggered him into writing mode once again, giving him song ideas that weren’t related to the Twin Peaks concept. That’s when he abandoned the Twin Peaks-only idea and the record really started to take shape.
The result is a record that came out almost exactly how he heard it in his head, despite the fact that he engineered and mixed it himself, something he is very proud of.
Today Glide is offering an exclusive premiere of “Without a Doubt,” a standout track on the new album. Rich with harmonica, piano, gentle acoustic guitars, and rain-like drums, the song is a quiet and moving piece of folk-rock that enchants the listener in its hushed comfort. Bringing to mind Elliott Smith alongside Jeff Tweedy, Amadon gives us plenty of quiet swooning that is brought to a new level with the pedal steel solo work of Paul Brainard to add plenty of twang.
Amadon describes the inspiration behind the song:
“‘Without a Doubt’ was written at the very end of the sessions for the record, after the point at which I actually thought I was done recording. The first line of the song and the verse melody just popped right into my head while I was taking a shower. It had a nice tune to it, and I thought the lyric was kind of strange. I’m partial to strange lyrics so it really caught my attention. So, beginning from this simple first line – “I told you before that I don’t dance”, and with the image in my head of the guy you always see on the periphery of dance floors who is either too shy or too cool to dance, a story started to come together. It basically describes the tension of two people who are very different, but share an attraction. She loves to dance, he doesn’t. She’s an extrovert, he’s an introvert. Etc. As the title suggests, he doesn’t care about these differences. Does she? We don’t know, as the song is from his perspective. That’s the basic idea behind the song-whether or not very different kinds of people can still be compatible.”
LISTEN:
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