Nennen

Nennen makes music for catharsis: for shining gentle light into dark corners, for lovingly untangling complex emotions, for refusing to look away.

Whatever you call it - soft metal, or maybe hard folk - it’s arresting and fierce, and it makes sense: Amy Macdonald, the primary force behind Nennen, cut her teeth playing in hardcore and noise projects in Edmonton and her adopted hometown of Montreal. Nennen takes the ferocity of these genres, softens their edges, and attacks from a different angle.

Evoking the sonics of artists like Grouper, Chelsea Wolfe, and Emma Ruth Rundle, Nennen juxtaposes expressive vocal melodies with fluid time signatures and spacious sonic landscapes to create a slow burn, tracing a line between tension and release, intimacy and distance, total control and complete unraveling.

With devastating precision, Macdonald’s lyrics map the tender terrain of our obligations to others and to ourselves, passing through broken promises, unexplained silences, blossoming bonds, and emotional revolutions. The result is striking, raw, unflinchingly vulnerable, and deeply beautiful.

A roster of past and present collaborators including Tim Keen and Matt May (<a href="spotify:artist:2VhVBXSB8n2KxuzKVZNxTY" data-name="Ought">Ought</a>), dearly departed drummer Joni Sadler (<a href="spotify:artist:0kZNX4jXgY5MuydwdNqaqv" data-name="Lungbutter">Lungbutter</a>), current drummer Lucas Huang (Hsien, Egyptian Cotton Arkestra), and bassist Tasy Hudson (<a href="spotify:artist:5nlpqhz47LYv7KvarJdh44" data-name="BIG|BRAVE">BIG|BRAVE</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:3sE8O47mEFWR6pL0rwnAHy" data-name="Ada Lea">Ada Lea</a>) lend strength and dynamism to Macdonald’s compositions.