The Damnwells have been out of the spotlight for a while.  Since their last album, the stunning breakthrough Air Stereo, the band went on a grueling tour, had their van break down and was unceremoniously dropped by their label (not to name names, but it was Epic–feel free to send hate mail).

All of this glorious misery was chronicled in an award-winning rockumentary by Chris Suchorsky called (in scintillatingly twisted irony) “Golden Days,” which, unfortunately, is probably not coming to a theater near you.


The Damnwells - Tonight & Forever (Chaos Theory Scene) - For more funny videos, click here

Since that movie was made, frontman Alex Dezen has enrolled in graduate school, begun teaching college classes, embarked on a writing career, gotten married, had his songs appear in a major motion picture (see the Chaos Theory clip above) and, finally, finished this heart-breakingly great new album, One Last Century.

The band has decided to give away this record for free through Paste magazine.  Here’s Alex’s thoughts about that:

I suppose the hardest thing to explain to people is why I’m giving this record away. “You’re just going to give it away?” seems antithetical to the human brain.  “Is this just a bunch of b-sides or something?  Some ‘give away’ material you don’t mind releasing into the ether?”  No.  Quite the contrary.  I have never worked so hard or put so much of myself into a collection of recorded songs.  It is for just this reason that I want to give it away.  To me it makes perfect sense.  I just want people to hear this music, and I don’t want them to have to enter into some kind of contractual agreement with a third party to do so.  Download the record, copy it and give it to your friends, lovers, and enemies.  Whatever.  It’s so hard these days just to get the actual music into people’s houses and cars, let alone their ears.  Besides, I know everyone’s broke, maybe I can supply the soundtrack.  So, I just want to give this music away because I want people to hear it.  I should have done this years ago.  I’m starting over.

Enjoy,

Alex Dezen
You can downoad it here.