Amen Dunes’ “Ethio Covers” is dangerously fresh, regardless of what you are or aren’t into right now. Its contents originally emerged from Ethiopian musicians — hence the title — and AD’s reduxes are hitting a lot of angles, hard. “Ethio Song” leads off with an especially impressive, pleading vocal tremolo and a lush, lily-pad flow akin to a mushed-up, slowed-down surf song (one of those old, mellow instrumental ones, blurry at the edges production-wise like those old Blank Dogs tunes) or a psych-rubbed, shuffling cut by Nick Cave’s old backing band. This also reminds me of how much I dug that first Velvet Davenport cassette on Moon Glyph. The two cuts slicing Side B in half aren’t as flat-out inspiring, but there is more of that great lamb-bleating on the mic and a general adherence to the rules of rendering tranquility not just passable but engrossing, at least once the opening sequence of “Ethio Song II” is bolstered by those wondrous vox. “Ethio Song III” works better, boasting more of those luscious, surf-y six-string swipes, every bit as appealing as Ganglians at their best. And, to paraphrase Chris Cooper circa Adaptation: “And I love the Ganglians.”
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