CD Odyssey Disc 879: Dan Mangan

I’m a bit tired tonight after a long day, and I’m looking forward to some couch surfing. But first…music!

Disc 879 is….Nice, Nice, Very Nice

Artist: Dan Mangan

Year of Release: 2009

What’s up with the Cover? The profile of none other than Her Majesty, Elizabeth II!  This version of Elizabeth has shades of rock and roll about her, with a crown featuring a lightning bolt and a frog earing.

This is one of the more clever album titles in my collection. “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” is the title of the second chapter of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic book “Cat’s Cradle” and “this is Mangan’s second album. Nicely played, Dan.

How I Came To Know It: I believe our friends Sherylyn and Joel put us on to this Dan Mangan album. I haven’t seen or talked to either of them in years, but I hope they are doing well.

How It Stacks Up:  I have three of Dan Mangan’s albums, and “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” is by far the best one. It isn’t even close.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

It is easy to hate on so-called ‘indie’ music these days, but listening to the very indie-sounding “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” I had a hard time pitching in.

Hell, if I was in my twenties right now I would probably be a hipster. I’ve always enjoyed liking the things other people didn’t (in my youth, that was heavy metal) and hating things everyone else loved (Duran Duran comes to mind). Sardonic comments about life? Guilty.

I may have missed the hipster bandwagon (I guess when it comes to iconoclasts I prefer music’s earlier work) but I’m glad I didn’t miss Dan Mangan. He may be too clever for his own good, but he backs it up by being too good to be just clever.

“Nice, Nice, Very Nice” is Mangan’s crowning achievement. His insightful lyrics make you look around the everyday world, and let you know it is OK to appreciate the small things. Stuck in traffic? Broken cell phone? Experience the moment, and let Dan show you how these little things also have meaning.

Through it all, this record never feels self-satisfied or smug like it could in lesser hands. This is a record about feeling awkward and not being afraid to share the experience. As he sings on “The Indie Queens Are Waiting”:

“Are we cool now? Are we cool?

Bus down to the local record store

Buy something to make you like me more.”

Records? Admissions of a lack of coolness? Hell, this song even has a direct reference to ‘Indie Queens’ in the title. Are you cool now, Dan? By today’s standards you sure are, even though you can’t admit that you know it. Or maybe you can? The self-deprecating honesty feedback loop on this record never really rests easy on that question.

More important than all this very timely norm-core coolness is the fact that Mangan writes a beautiful pop song. “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” is full of melodies that are compelling and yet unlike anything you’ll hear on the mainstream radio (or so I imagine, being too cool for mainstream radio, myself). His music has a nice mid-tempo swell throughout, punctuated by flourishes of horns here and there that add just the right dash of self-importance to let you know Mangan is kidding, at least a little.

The worst part of music as far down the indie well as Dan Mangan is that it can very easily become emotionless, but Mangan seems to be well aware of the tightrope he is walking. He generally stays on the right side of that line. When he crosses over the song becomes almost a musical apology for doing so. As he sings on “Tina’s Glorious Comeback”:

“I’m ambitious when giving up.

Never thinking clear enough.

But we’re not Elvis anymore.

We’re not Frankie in his wild years.

We’re not Tina’s glorious comeback.

We’re not us.

We’re not us.”

On “Robots” he purports to be referencing broken cell phones when he says “Robots need love too/They want to be loved by you” but he could just as easily be talking about all the Indie queens (and kings) with their detached observations on life, poorly hiding their all-too frail and human hearts.

Incidentally, I saw Mangan in concert (with the aforementioned Sherylyn and Joel) and he was amazing, and deeply emotional. “Robots” had the entire audience singing along with a fervor that showed just how deeply affecting his lyrics can be when you take them into your heart.

On “Basket” you can feel Mangan’s appeal back to sixties folk music, and the song could have easily been an early Simon and Garfunkel track. When Mangan loses himself in his topic (as he does on “Basket” which is about coming to terms with aging) he can be downright depressing, but in a way that chooses to be thoughtful about tragedy, rather than wallow in it.

One quibble about the CD packaging on this record is Mangan’s introductory paragraph about what each song is about (that’s how a luddite like me know that “Robots” was inspired by a cell phone). I’d rather experience art on its own merits, without someone telling me how to approach it first. The songs are easily good enough to speak for themselves.

In the end, I wanted slightly more emotional expression, but for the most part Mangan’s exceptional songwriting skills, his gift for turning the ordinary into the admirable and his hyper-honest self-examination made this album compelling on the first listen, and the many I’ve had since.

Best tracks:  Road Regrets, Robots, The Indie Queens are Waiting, Tina’s Glorious Comeback, Et Les Mots Croises, Basket

CD Odyssey Disc 376: Dan Mangan

Driving home from the gym tonight I again marvelled at people who wait at a light until a few seconds before it changes, then inch forward only to hit their brakes one last time. Then the light changes and they drive off.

There just seems something terribly wrong with wasting all that inertia for nothing. It feels like there's only so much inertia in the universe, and these guys are spending it fruitlessly.

Anyway, that's my deep thought for the day. Now on to the music.

Disc 376 is...Oh Fortune
Artist: Dan Mangan

Year of Release: 2011

What’s Up With The Cover?: It looks like a picture from the Great Depression, with people lining up to get to California and away from the dust bowl. It's a hell of a world sometimes.

How I Came To Know It: I was introduced to Dan Mangan by my friends Joel and Sherylyn, who bought me his second album "Nice Nice, Very Nice" for my birthday. I liked that album a lot, but when I bought the one that preceded it I was disappointed. Joel encouraged me to not give up on him and get this third one, and he was right - it was another good one.

How It Stacks Up: If you've been reading along (yes - more reading comprehension), you'll know I have three Dan Mangan albums. I'd put this one second, or middle of the pack.

Rating: 3 stars.

Strangely, I just mentioned this album back at Disc 372, when I admitted I'd uploaded it for an idle listen when I didn't feel like giving "Bachelor Pad Royale" a second listen before reviewing it. Little did I know that I'd be rolling it only a few albums later.

Every artist Joel and Sherylyn have put me on to in the last few years has resulted in me buying multiple albums (The Dead Weather, Mother Mother, The Kills, Gogol Bordello) and Dan Mangan is no exception.

Mangan is a Vancouver indie act that blends understated pop arrangements with folk sensibilities. I'm not generally a fan of indie, but I like it best where it intersects with folk, so Mangan is right in my wheelhouse.

His voice isn't particularly powerful, and he doesn't demonstrate a great range, but he has an honesty in his delivery and his phrasing has a way of making you feel there is a torrent of additional thought underneath what are often very simple lyrics. It is a winning combination.

Musically, he uses a surprisingly large number of instruments for music that sounds so simply produced. This is becoming a lost art in modern pop music, where everyone seems to think more layers equals more better. The results are usually about as compelling as that last sentence; well-meaning but ultimately mangled.

By contrast, "Oh Fortune" is Manganed - the record features the usual Big Four (vocals, guitar, bass and drums) and then adds in a whole horn section. When I say horn section, I don't just mean a few trumpets here and there either - we're talking trombones, clarinets, french horns - the works. He also has about four different types of organs, a bunch of strings and a piano or two.

The trick is that he brings each in only when they are needed, allowing the range of instrumentation to communicate a lot of different sounds, but keeping the whole nice and simple, with lots of audio handles for your ear to get a hold of.

Lyrically, the songs are fairly basic and understated - it is more Mangan's delivery that makes you a believer. He does stray into that indie habit of falling in love with a series of clever phrases that don't always string together into a compelling narrative. No doubt there are music fans that like this approach, but it isn't for me. One high point is "Post-War Blues" which begins satirically:

"Let's start a war for the kids.
A purpose for which to unite
Make them some words they can mince
What they don't know they won't mind."

This song is more than satire though, as Mangan gives voice to more than post-war confusion, but a more general post-modern confusion. One that affects him so profoundly he muses over something as dark as war, just in the seeking of purpose. These examinations of directionlessness is what indie is best at, and Mangan does it better than most.

All that said, I have three complaints about this album, two minor and one major.

First, it is heavily introspective. This isn't really a fault at all, and on headphones (which is how I'm listening as I write this) it is excellent. However, the lack of a lot of musical peaks and valleys make it harder to enjoy in the car or on the stereo, where it has to compete with ambient sound. Even when I was walking to work, I had to pause it a couple of times for traffic, just so I could give it a fair and full listen. Hardly a fault, since many of life's most beautiful things open up to you in quieter moments, but still worth mentioning.

More annoying is Mangan's habit of naming songs something clever rather than something descriptive. The first two tracks are "Helpful As You Can Be Without Being Any Help At All" and "How Darwinian" - neither track ever says anything remotely akin to these. I even like the first song, but if all else fails, how about naming it after the first line, "Both feet together..." That would've been a fine name, Dan.

The worst offender on this front is the last song, "Jeopardy" which is a song entirely composed of questions. Get it? Like the show where the answers are in the form of questions? Yes, I get it, Dan, but sadly it brings me to my more major complaint. Mangan is a smart guy, and that comes across in his lyrics, and his song composition. However, sometimes (as in "Jeopardy") it feels more like he is experimenting with form, when he should be providing a final product.

I absolutely love some of these songs, but others feel like something that came out of writer's workshop, excercises for his mind, not finished products. Another example would be "Daffodil" where he tries to write an entire chorus out of different flowers:

"Oh daffodil, my petunia
Oh daffodil, my rose."

I'm not even sure what the hell this means, but its strained imagery pulls me out of the moment. A big part of music for me is putting me into the moment, so when this happened it browned me off.

Luckily, it didn't happen that often. In fact, even "Jeopardy" managed to be one of my favourite songs, despite Mangan's efforts to wreck it by insisting I look behind the curtain. Ultimately, he's good enough to pull it off.

Best tracks: About As Helpful As You Can Be Without Being Any Help At All, Post-War Blues, Starts With Them Ends With Us, Jeopardy