“The songs on Next Year In Zion are warm and exuberant, and for the Dunes, true love is the salve for a world-weary cynic’s psychic wounds. In On a Saturday and When The Sun Rose Up This Morning the narrator’s heart is so full of love and hope, it threatens to burst at the seams. “It’s the first album that I write while I am happy,” says David. “I used to think I needed to be a little sad, or at least melancholic to write, this one proved me wrong…” His words distill innocent beauty from the prosaic and he crows about them with a joyous high lonesome timbre and soft accent. But Zion is not all California sunshine and paeans to falling in love. Even for a happy man, thunder clouds gather on the horizon. There is the lingering specter of loneliness (My Home Is Nowhere Without You) betrayal (Next Year In Zion) and an undercurrent that something much bigger than him is pulling the strings (Someone Knows Better Than Me).
On the recording, Herman Dune expand the core duo to include their extended family of female backing vocalists The Babyskins, The John Natchez Bourbon Horn players (on loan from Beirut and Arcade Fire) and guitar virtuoso Dave Tattersall (of UK band The Wave Pictures).
Engineered by Richard Formby (who also worked on of 2006’s Giant and 2004’s Not On Top) the sessions were recorded on a handmade, vintage EMI mixing board from Abbey Road once used by the Rolling Stones. “Richard played in Spacemen 3 for a while, and then in Spectrum. I love both projects and I’ve always admired the knowledge of Rhythm & Blues music they seem to have in the band. We met Richard at his studio when we were on tour, and he knew endless facts about Allen Toussaint, The Meters and Ska and Reggae bands. He never uses anything digital and could name all the equipment that was at Columbia Records or in Abbey Road.”
Self-produced over two weeks, Herman Dune chose to record the sessions live to analog tape at VEGA studios, in the French countryside of Provence, with every player working together in the same room. “The sound is a matter of choosing the musicians, the instruments, the room, and of the vibes that came from all these choices. Recording live makes everybody in the room focus on what makes the song sound right, instead of what their own part sounds like,” says David-Ivar Herman Dune, who’s ambitious methods recall American pop music icons like Lieber & Stoller, Phil Spector and Berry Gordy, Jr., who he counts among his favorite producers. “I think it’s interesting how their music is still so intense, new and alive, decades after it was recorded.”
“I’ve always loved knowing how records I love were made, I love watching footage of The Beatles recording, seeing pictures of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed or The Doors in a studio. I’ve always gathered facts about how Phil Spector, Ellie Greenwich, Carole King and Shadow Morton got those songs to sound that good. I went to visit Motown in Detroit, and used to carry a picture of Sam Phillips in my textbook when I was a kid. Trying producing records myself is like trying all those toys and tools I’ve seen in pictures. It’s a lot of fun….”
Next Year In Zion shows the Parisian duo at their most lyrically and sonically robust. Arrangements include as many nods to traditional Jewish and Eastern European instrumentation and Ennio Morricone’s desert vistas as they do to Chuck Berry and The Velvet Underground’s controlled cacaphony. The songs on Next Year In Zion reveal something new with each listen, and it’s the band’s most accomplished and complete offering to date.”
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