Herman Dune – Odysseús – KLOF Mag

It’s twenty-five years since David Ivar first released an album under the Herman Dune moniker. In a sense, Ivar is the ideal chronicler of our fragmented century: a Franco-Swede who sings in English and has put down roots in California, he flits easily from Americana to folk, from lo-fi slacker-rock aesthetics to world-weary country-inflected balladry. His musical philosophy seems entirely open and admirably humanistic. Odysseús is his fifteenth album and, like so much music in recent years, has its roots in the Covid pandemic. Ivar was stranded in Montréal during the travel ban, paying daily visits to Leonard Cohen’s grave and pining for his home and family in LA. The songs that resulted from this period of almost monastic seclusion in a foreign city are classic Herman Dune, but with an added sense of yearning.

After a brief, scene-setting intro that contains a combination of field recordings and wobbly, woozy instrumentation (perhaps indebted to Ivar’s recent work as a composer of film scores), the title track bustles into view on a springy acoustic strum. Ivar’s voice, hot in the mix, delivers nimble lyrics of longing, positioning himself as Homer’s hero at the beginning of his decade-long journey back to Ithaca. Ivar isn’t the first to take inspiration from the Odyssey, and he sure won’t be the last, but his way of focusing on his own helplessness and the need for physical comfort is refreshing, and very twenty-first century. Subtle backing vocals (a Greek chorus?) and strings carry the song towards a conclusion that never arrives, or at least not yet, as Odysseus remains stuck in his hotel room. As well as the nods to Greek myth, there is also the sense that Ivar is running alongside his hero, Cohen. The comparisons are evident in the simple cleverness of the lyrics, the warmth of the female backing vocals, the implicit reference to Cohen’s own links with Greece.

Tune Out is more laid back. The literary and religio-mystical concerns of Cohen are replaced by John Prine-esque concerns: the often-ignored minutiae of daily life and the humour in the mundane (a cat that looks like a Russian hat). Ivar’s voice is raspier and rustier than ever, and more full of life. On Sneakers on the Telephone Line, he adds jaw harp to a swampy bottleneck blues lick; the result lands somewhere between Beck and David Berman. Buffoon of Love features a sweet lullaby melody and an unexpected left-turn in the form of a lead vocal spot for Ivar’s partner Mayon. The pair’s interaction has a hint of Lee and Nancy about it, but the feeling behind it is much more sincere. In fact, sincerity and genuineness of emotion are key components of Odysseús’s success, and never more so than on the piano ballad Into the Darkness Indeed: it flows like prime McCartney or Carole King, but with the downbeat slacker sensibility of Will Oldham.

There is positivity here too, especially on 369 (The Sun Gon’ Shine) with its soaring chorus and its indomitable Nashville Skyline chord progressions. But overall, the atmosphere is lightly melancholic, as on the booze-soaked Head Against the Wall, the sound of a man looking for answers in all the usual places and knowing he’s not going to find them. A River Keeps Running (When a Good Man Dies) is bluntly aphoristic country-folk with a snaking violin solo. Moonlight on Gaffey Street is the most Cohenesque moment on the album, but also mirrors more recent New York anti-folkers like Jeffrey Lewis. Ivar, like Lewis, has a gift for being poignant and funny and resigned within the compass of a single phrase, and that gift is never more obvious than on this song.

On Odysseús closing track Viduy וִדּוּי (Confession), Ivar lays himself bare with brutal honesty but also with pretty melodicism and wordless backing vocals which are almost angelic. It gets close to the tension at the heart of his songs, songs which, with their lo-fi or slacker sensibilities rarely feel as if they should harbour any tension at all. But Ivar is a consummate artist, a songwriter adept at hiding emotional depths in plain sight, and Odysseús is another outstanding example of his work.

Odysseús (June 13th, 2025) BB*ISLAND