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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited Edition. Black Vinyl LP pressing.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more

    Includes unlimited streaming of Amok via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    edition of 200 

      $35 CAD

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Matte coated, Gatefold Style CD Jacket

    Includes unlimited streaming of Amok via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Amok via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days

      $20 CAD or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

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1.
Within the Pale 05:16
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The world quits spinning where lives intersect In an uneasy quiet You call out a name because you’ll never know Until you try it Hasten the cold light of day You’ve got it coming The feeling subsiding the spirit succumbing Can you see where you’re supposed to be Within the pale No one to show you beyond the veil With your arms ‘round another could you see Where you’re supposed to be Anxious and reeling eyes fixed on the ceiling You know that you’ve not seen it all One day you woke tied to a bed Shadows dancing in the hall Eyes on you Don’t let go How you’re alive and breathing The heavens only know Can you see where you’re supposed to be Within the pale No one to show you beyond the veil With your arms ‘round another could you see Where you’re supposed to be
2.
Every Revolution Around the Sun 04:07
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Last night I dreamt that the world stood still My rowboat tipped as the satellites fell I dreamt a dream of catastrophe With every revolution round the sun One more number Another revolution round the sun Over and over I pulled myself out of the river of mud Climbed the rubble of the town that tumbled down in the flood Turned my lens to the burning sky With every revolution round the sun One more number Another revolution round the sun Over and over Go through the motions Every heartbeat Blood on your wristwatch Friends in the wings With your face in the mirror Love on the ceiling Glimpse of the ether A bloom from the garden A song for the morning Is this a new year A chance to start over Over and over
3.
Get Thee Behind the Wheel 05:11
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My appetite begs to forget My angels have not answered yet And still my cup it overflows Yet unlike the beast I feed each day That lives to sleep and screw and play My heart seems wild, the mind unreal Step back get thee behind the wheel There’s no coloured lights no easy movement You lay a hand on top of mine And all the world beneath the sky Reveals itself in dirt and pavement Step back the edge is closer now Step back and watch the others fall Step back the congregation kneels Step back get there behind the wheel There’s no coloured lights no easy movement Move fast Dance this Tarantella
4.
Many Years From Now 05:02
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A strange evolution Between now and then There’s wolves at the door the rent’s long overdue Put a flame to the tinders Of remember whens You’re done with your past your past ain’t done with you Though this make believe It suits me too We won’t know what it does to us Till many years from now Say goodbye to your family Goodbye to your friends Let the heavy-handed heart to hearts go nuclear There’s a place to the north We could start again Once behind the times welcome to your future We won’t know what it does to us Till many years from now The smoke was always in your eyes We won’t know what it does to us Till many years from now
5.
All the World Above You 03:54
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All the world above you All the light you keep inside All the people who will love you The place you keep inside their minds Time stretched before you Past a place that I can reach Just a ghost that walks beside you Made of sound and memory God took all his secrets And he hid them in the dark In the place you go when you are dreaming And in the space between the stars All the strength that you will borrow And all the time that you will steal And a love so dire so as to beg for The things you learn when you learn to kneel All the lies that I will tell you All the truths you won’t believe The beliefs that will betray you And whatever helps you sleep I’m not afraid of where I’m going But I’m afraid to leave For once I’ve left this mortal coil How will you then tug upon my sleeve
6.
Maggie 02:57
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Before you let yourself linger Grow a chip on your shoulder Before the wolves come knocking And all the neighbours start talking Before you’re lost in the blue light And all the kids are just alright Like Hera in the garden And all the fruit has gone rotten You could lose your mind for a moment It’s not an easy burden to bare Maggie look over here Maybe one day the ground shakes You know one day everybody’s heart breaks Though California’s done for We can see the ocean from our front door It’s alright to feel broken There’s still time to start smoking Every man’s a number Every woman a stranger You could lose your mind by the ocean Bring your buried treasure to bare Maggie look over here
7.
People That We All Know 04:00
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Gotta get this off my chest Do what the imp of the perverse seems to suggest The music stops whisper under my breath Hold me close, my love I must confess You and I have no chance of living Like people that we all know Beneath the surface everyday Imagine all the things nobody will ever say I’m spoiled for choice here next to you That fades away So kiss goodbye a life worth living Like people that we all know Don’t know where we get the nerve To rest our dreams upon the spawn of god’s green earth Again, the music plays a song that we’ve both heard Hold me close, my love and rest assured When you close your eyes then you’ll be living Like people that we all know
8.
God Fearing Men 05:59
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The well has run dry So put the rope and the knifes away I know you’re willing like a lamb to the killing Good things come to those who run, run em down It’s a stampede it’s Black Friday If you can’t stand it leave empty handed We kept the children safe by strapping them in But we’re now no longer who we once were when Should we throw them from this sinking ship and tell them to swim With the last of the God-fearing men Never questioned The house on fire you let it burn Then you waited, vindicated Who’s to say who can stay, who will fall from grace How to teach what won’t be learned Live and let live My god’s electric We kept the children safe by strapping them in But we’re now no longer who we once were when Should we throw them from this sinking ship and tell them to swim With the last of the God-fearing men Like Theodore was saying from beneath the wooden boards Are you a simple man of action? Is your pedal always floored? And maybe nothing happens each time we say goodbye Or perhaps when this is over, we all learn to fly
9.
More Was Said Than Done 09:21
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Knees bruised Running through black spruce The air like a cold noose Hear the beasts overhead Takes a long time To run in a straight line Part the clouds of a dark mind Autumn hills burn auburn red After all the ground you’ve won And all was said and done Much more was said than done Day falls On a phone full of missed calls You fumble for the wherewithal To find your way home Knocked out Lost the keys and you’re locked out Spent a lifetime trying to figure out How to leave yourself alone After all the ground you’ve won And all was said and done Much more was said than done When you’ve had enough It’s never enough

about

Within the earthy, baroque psychedelia of his 3rd album, Amok, Declan O’Donovan meditates on losing track of time. It’s a phenomenon we’re all intimately familiar with—”a pedestrian and profound thing to do,” as the Yukon songwriter puts it. Amok is hardly a linear narrative, though, with a beginning, middle, and end; the album and the characters who populate it twist and pull time, fall out of it and into it, find themselves transformed by it. Songs go off the rails and expand themselves defiantly as O’Donovan inhabits their narrators—a hospital patient; a character in an Edgar Allen Poe story; people trapped on sinking ships or floating in space with satellites and dark matter.
“I lived on the Californian coast, hiked through the boreal forest, borrowed from friends and family, stole from Exodus and Joseph Campbell,” O’Donovan says. “I lit a fire, fell asleep, got woke, got high, got Covid, got angry at the church, lost my keys, and split the atom.”
Throughout it all, perhaps because of it all, “time gets disrupted, reveals itself to be uncontrollable,” he says. “Runs amok.”
Amok takes sonic cues from the places it was born in, geographically and mentally. It bends, sometimes, toward grandeur, like the vast and mountainous terrain surrounding O’Donovan’s hometown of Whitehorse, where most of the songs were written. It trades in a lushness of sound that recalls the all-encompassing greenery of Vancouver Island, where it was recorded. And it reels with a similar terror and revelatory spirit that descended upon O’Donovan during a mushroom trip in the rainforest on that same west coast before he began writing these songs. Amok frequently pushes back, too, against 21st-century isolation, investigating its effects and building something to snuff them out. Against the heaviness, O’Donovan arms himself with a healthy dose of irreverence, never taking himself too seriously. Over the jaunty piano of “Maggie,” there’s even something to find joy in as the west coast slips into the sea: “Though California’s done for, we can see the ocean from our front door.”
Maybe it’s most accurate to say the album unravels as O’Donovan makes his way through its nine tracks. The shadowy “Within the Pale” eases us into things with a slithery groove that gives way to a spacey outro carried by a fuzz guitar melody. O’Donovan dreams a dream of catastrophe on the apocalyptic, slow-burning “Every Revolution Around the Sun;” he drives “Get Thee Behind the Wheel” with a piano line that rolls like a waterfall; he meditates on how the present might affect our future on the sombre “Many Years From Now;” and he wraps the shadowy “All the World Above You” with a few lines that sum up what’s really behind our anxieties about death: “I’m not afraid of where I’m going, but I’m afraid to leave—for once I’ve left this mortal coil, how will you then tug upon my sleeve?”
“Maggie” immediately lifts things up with its troubled but sun-kissed psych-pop. The anti-ballad “People That We All Know” celebrates solidarity in the kindred strangeness of another, while “God Fearing Men” quietly seethes against hypocrisy with its low rumbling Wurlitzer. Finally, O’Donovan closes the curtain on Amok with “More Was Said Than Done,” a nearly 10-minute epic that begins with earthbound piano and spins out and up into a blissful, otherworldly dream.

We all lose track of time, get lost in time, struggle with our places in the world. Amok recognizes the miraculousness and mundanity of existence. As O’Donovan asserts: it’s all as pedestrian as it is profound.

credits

released April 14, 2023

Darren Parris: electric bass
Leon Power: drums, percussion
Paul Rigby: acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Declan O’Donovan: vocals, piano, Clavinet, Wurlitzer, Rhodes, organ, synthesizers, acoustic guitar

Layten Kramer: electric guitar on 'Many Years From Now'

Produced, mixed, and engineered by Colin Stewart at The Hive Studio in North Saanich, BC

Mastered by Philip Shaw Bova
Art Design by Nicholas Luchak
Photography by Nasuna Stuart-Ulin
All songs written by Declan O’Donovan

All Rights Reserved.
www.declanodonovan.com

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Declan O'Donovan Whitehorse, Yukon

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