Terrorbird

On the new album Next Year In Zion, songwriter and vocalist David-Ivar Herman Dune and drummer Neman Herman Dune deliver a dozen charming and intricately constructed pop songs. On the heels of two handmade EPs from Everloving in 2008 (I Wish That I Could See You Soon and 1-2-3/Apple Tree), Next Year In Zion is the Parisian duo's debut long-player for the Los Feliz, California indie. It is the sound of Herman Dune, all grown up.

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. 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).

Frontman David-Ivar's facility in bending the English language to his whims is formidable, given that he was raised in Paris but born in Stockholm of Swedish and Jewish descent. He learned American English playing chess with his grandfather, a Swedish diplomat who lived in DC, and began writing simple songs at the age of 11. There is sly playfulness and whimsy in the lyrical acrobatics and rhyme schemes and his phrasing and cadence pay tribute to songwriters like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jonathan Richman and Stephen Malkmus. On drums and percussions, Neman Herman Dune provides the steady heartbeat that syncopates David's words and music. These two play off each other's strengths with the familiar ease of life-long friendship.
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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).

Self-produced over two weeks in the French countryside of Provence, Herman Dune chose to record the sessions live to analog tape at VEGA studios with every player working together in the same room. Engineered by Richard Formby, Next Year In Zion was recorded on a handmade, vintage EMI mixing board from Abbey Road once used by the Rolling Stones.

The songs on Next Year In Zion reveal the Parisian duo at their most lyrical and sonically robust, and it's Herman Dune's most accomplished and complete offering to date.