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The acclaimed singer-songwriter Amigo the Devil (aka Danny Kiranos) has released a brand new single entitled ‘The Mechanic’. It is the second song to be lifted from his third studio album, ‘Yours Until The War Is Over’, which is set for release on 23rd February 2024 and contains ATD’s most disarming and inspired collection of songs to date.
‘The Mechanic’ sees hauntingly soft strings and Spanish-style acoustic guitar complement lyrics that reflect on a broken relationship, searching for a happiness lost to the painful reality of time spent together. Bonded through both love and trauma, the lyrics are profound in their depth yet simplicity:
Like a house that’s on fire but you love how it feels,
So you throw in the memories to feed it.
The more you let go, the harder it is to leave.
“The song is in line with realising your own flaws, but coming from the opposite side to my previous single ‘Cannibal Within’, where you are the one causing a lot of the imbalance,” explains Kiranos.
The accompanying video for ‘The Mechanic’ reveals intimate insights behind the making of the new album. Created in a basement bar-turned-studio in the middle of Tennessee, the video shows the bare-bones of ATD’s recording process, from scribbling lyrics on the pages of a journal, to the natural dynamics with songwriting partner and guitarist David Talley, to experimenting with oddball percussion from his homemade recording den.
‘Yours Until The War Is Over’ is the first studio album by ATD that was entirely recorded, produced and engineered in-house, with the collaborative nature of the new recording process shining throughout. Kiranos’ songs serve as cinematic vignettes that thread together stories of the human condition, trauma bonding and the method of using relationships for survival, whether by addiction, doubt, death, or narcissism. All heart with no boundaries, it is an album to be experienced from beginning to end in order to recognise the perspective it offers.
The album title is a reference to the love affair between Ernest Hemingway and his nurse Agnes von Kurowsky in the closing months of World War I, a (trauma) bond that developed after the future novelist was severely wounded in Italy just after becoming a Red Cross volunteer at the age of 18. She would sometimes end her love letters by writing “Yours until the war is over,” a sign-off that proved prophetic, her ultimate rejection devastating and scarring him.
The new album coincides with ATD’s latest US tour, his second since a successful summer 2023 European visit (his first with a full band) to promote 2021’s darkly romantic and hauntingly melodic ‘Born Against’ album. Earning acclaim from UK publications such as Classic Rock, Shindig!, Blues Matters, RNR and Louder Than War, Folk Radio UK neatly summed up everyone else’s thoughts in stating that “it reinforces the adage that the devil truly does have all the best tunes.”
Amigo The Devil, online.
The Mechanic/Yours Until The War Is Over artwork: paintings by Joan Lalucat
AMIGO THE DEVIL portrait – 2023 self-portrait
Live in London 2023 : photo by Alison Clarke @ Cliqmo Photography
