Brian Dunne
If you're a romantic, an artist, or an otherwise sentient being looking for a reason to believe, consider Clams Casino your wake up call. The fourth solo album from New York songwriter Brian Dunne is a burst of energy, a colossal leap forward, and a prolonged moment of direct eye-contact from one of this generation's sharpest observers of young American life. Self-produced at Dunne's home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Clams Casino was inspired by the classic songwriting form of working-class blues and placed in an unmistakably modern context. "Is it so bad to want a good life?" he asks in the opening title track, and these bracing, hook-filled songs navigate our ongoing negotiations through disappointment and rejection, loss and isolation, and ultimately, hard-earned self-determination
Following his acclaimed 2023 solo album Loser on the Ropes, released on Kill Rock Stars, and two word-of-mouth successes from his cheeky supergroup Fantastic Cat, Dunne sought to craft a more cohesive statement, based on the some of the archetypes he's observed throughout his life as a working musician and touring artist around the world. "Loser on the Ropes was about failure," he reflects, "but there was a fight that was ongoing--which is inherently optimistic. You're still in the ring." Now his observations arrive once the final bell has rung and the crowd has wandered home: "The bad guys won. What are we going to do?"
To answer these questions, Dunne kept his focus tight. He worked with only a few collaborators--Dan Drohan on drums, Alex Wright on organ for the climactic ballad "Living It Backwards"--and constructed his narratives as if drafting a tight-knit screenplay. "I could just see the characters play out--who gets to leave and who gets to stay, who gets to keep living the dream and who has it downsized. I was thinking about how it all comes down to class."
