Damion - Special Interest (2022) Hi-Res

Today, Bloomington, IN singer-songwriter Damion (Damion Schiralli) announces his forthcoming debut solo LP, ‘Special Interest’ (out via Earth Libraries).

Speaking on the track, Damion wrote the following: “The song was produced by Ben Lumsdaine and Lewis Rogers. Recording it was fairly smooth. The little synth line coming out of the bridge took like fifty tries to get right. I wanted the guitar solo to sound completely filthy and messed up, so we ended up putting it through Lewis’s reel to reel and totally maxed out the preamps. I knew I wanted the album to start with a song that bursts out of the gate in a big way, like ‘I Feel the Earth Move’ on Tapestry, or ‘I Saw the Light’ on ‘Something/Anything’. I came up with the main riff on an acoustic guitar and just played it for hours with no breaks til the chorus came to me. The whole thing just kind of poured out after that. I wanted the song to just be a fun mood-setter about being a social guy. I’m not really too much like that, but occasionally I feel that way. It’s important to me that no one takes the song too seriously, so I tried to have a lot of fun with the lyrics and arrangement.”

Damion sounds right at home in the ethereal wonderland of ‘Special Interest’, sinking headfirst into the maple syrup sweetness and impressionistic lyrics. And as the album closes on the title track, it does so on the mystic compulsion of art, of music, of being a musician. “The song is about that feeling you get playing at a bar 1,000 times”, he says. “You love doing it, but you still ask yourself why. The easy answer is just that I can’t not do it”. In ‘Special Interest’, the young Hoosier singer-songwriter honors the compulsion and the magic, cobbling together a style all his own — instantly familiar and magnetic, capable of breathtaking beauty in its embrace of life’s smallest moments.

To celebrate, he’s shared the record’s first single, ‘Company Man’.