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Papa’s Boat, the new album from Dana & Alden, is one that speaks to the Eugene, OR duo’s earliest memories and furthest travels: an eclectic mix of familial ties, friends new and old, and moments of musical ascension. It is an album that finds the group, Dana and Alden McWayne, stepping into their creative ambitions with a boldness and sensitivity like never before. Over 2023’s Quiet Music For Young People and 2025’s Speedo, Dana and Alden established an eclectic, genre-agnostic sound drawn from their omnivorous musical upbringing — built on Dana’s saxophone and Alden’s drums, rooted in jazz, but pulling strains from indie, pop, rap, funk, and more. That musical wanderlust is something they credit to their maternal grandfather. Affectionately known as Papa, he was the kind of person others naturally gravitate towards. Always an eccentric, he was a retired engineer involved in manufacturing the first Fairchild semiconductors and a recreational sailor. It was a photograph from one of his trips to Asia that inspired Papa’s Boat. In the image Papa is wearing tattered jorts and looking out across the horizon. Next to him is his boat, named Sŵn y Môr after the Welsh translation of “Sound of the Sea.” The result is an album that escapes landlocked rigidity for something more open, free, and expressive. An album in Papa’s image. Recorded in London in March 2025, Papa’s Boat combines all their childhood love and global experience to create an ecstatic sound built on Dana’s saxophone and Alden’s drums, rooted in jazz but pulling influence from indie, pop, rap, bossa nova, and beyond. Beginning with a hypnotic combination of sax and buzzing synths on “Lighthouse” the album immediately feels bracing and alive. Guest vocalist Ebba Dankel, one of many friends that appear during the album, places herself by the shore as she sings: “I met you at a lighthouse. Now I never see your eyes. I’m back on the East Coast. Nothing feels the same.” It sets the tone for an album that uses water as both a reflective surface and a body to get lost in. “Papa was a really special guy,” Dana explains. “I think so much of what Alden and I are doing comes from just watching him live his own unique life.” Alden agrees. “His emboldened, passionate personality gave us permission to be our own selves, to be unconventional and draw outside of the box.” In addition to travelling, Papa was also a keen linguist and would encourage his grandsons to learn Spanish. After he passed away the brothers travelled to Nicaragua and Uruguay, picking up the language as they made their way through the Americas. “We made a lot of friends and learned the value of cultural exchange,” Dana says. “It felt like we were really carrying on his legacy in those travels. And in this album, too.” Dana and Alden travelled to London after becoming friends with drummer Yussef Dayes. Longtime fans of the U.K. jazz scene, namedropping Gilles Peterson, Shabaka, and Nubya Garcia as influences, they were then welcomed into sessions at Malcolm Catto’s Quatermass Soundlab studio in Hackney. “We went down there and then I think we all just collectively got goosebumps,” Alden recalls of the unsuspecting basement space which contains a bounty of jazz history hidden beneath a community centre hosting fitness classes. “We literally played for maybe eight hours straight,” says Dana. “Malcolm would just go into his control room and record through his old broadcast desk and he'd come out once in a while and say, ‘Keep doing more of that.’” “Lighthouse” opens the album with a jolt, charting an unpredictable path over the course of the rest of the album, mirroring the spontaneity that world travel can bring. The subdued and intimate “Trick Dog” settles the waters before unleashing “Summer Nights,” a carefree roller that captures the vibe of a party when the air is warm and time seems to last forever. “We immediately felt it was a song that would be played at a roller skating rink,” Dana says. “We wanted it to feel like a sunny day. We’re just grooving on it.” They called in friends from Brooklyn’s Frontyard FM crew to join the party and add vocals. It’s a moment of unbridled collective joy on an album that places community and tactile connection above all else. The circle of friends on Papa’s Boat includes new faces and old. The duo’s backing band, Ebba Dankel (vocals and keys), Andrew Mitchell (bass), Eli Torgersen (vocals and guitar) and Salim Charvet (sax and synths) appear throughout as key voices on the album. Mei Semones, a friend of Alden’s from Berklee, studs her feather lite vocals into their psychedelic jazz sky on “Lee’s Greenhouse” while longtime collaborator Cinya Khan appears on “inthistogether.” There are also two collaborations with Marcos Valle. The legendary Brazilian singer-songwriter appears on both “El Gaucho” and “Friendship Is A Boat” “He has been one of our musical heroes since we were 12 years old,” Dana says. “We worked on this apple orchard in Oregon for this farmer named Tom, who was obsessed with Brazilian music and Marcos Valle. He would just ride around on his tractor every day and come back and show us the new albums he had found. Both of the songs are really just a dream come true.” Throughout its runtime Papa’s Boat sails purposefully between memories of the past and visions of a brighter future, an album fully cognisant of the journeys, music and loved ones that have shaped its creation. It is an album the brothers are deeply proud of and one that doesn’t just commemorate their papa as a beloved character, but shares him with the world.
