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Dan Mangan's fifth album is out this week. Entitled More or Less, the collection showcases the singer's return to writing songs directly after the 2015 Experimental Club Med.
This critically acclaimed album and his tour with the incredible band Blacksmith is an experience he says he will never forget. But instead of calling on Canada's best improvisers again, Mangan wanted to get back to basics and sing. Along the way, he found new ways to use his emotional and gravelly instrument by singing more softly.
It gave her voice a lot more reach and color.
"Doing the tour with Blacksmith was a huge sound and I often felt like I was riding this wave," he said. "After a concert, I would meet at the bargaining table to meet people who would clearly say they like it, but really want to have more voice in structured songs that look more like my older material. I would say that the quality of the response I got from the four songs we have picked on this album so far really reinforced the fact that it was the right direction to follow. "
The four songs in question were Fool For Waiting, Troubled Mind, Cold in the Summer and Just Fear. The immaculate production, courtesy of Grammy Award-winning producer Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck, others) and Simon Felice (The Lumineers, Bat for Lashes) positions Mangan's voice in an unmatched way, creating a whole new range and power.
In the process of creating the disc, he says he discovered his qualities.
"I had to try a lot of things because that was where my heart was, but if you describe what I'm good at, it's meaningless in words," he said. "I'm not an incredible musician and I'll never be, because I spent enough time with them to know that they have something I will never have. But what I do is write good songs and find a way to use my voice – which you would not want from your choir – to deliver them. "
More or Less is a refined album with a definitive impression of the producers. Mangan said that he was stunned when Drew Brown contacted him and brought him trumps such as drummer Joey Waronker (Roger Waters, Beck, REM), instrumentalist Jason Falkner and the ### 39, engineer Darrell Thorp at the Los Angeles studio. He had never worked this way before.
"It must have been the fifth album where I handed the keys to someone else, I could never have done that on my third album," he said. . "But Drew really drove the bus and it's really cool that he has enough confidence in the songs to be able to spend all that time. He took songs to work, adding and subtracting without letting me hear between sessions, and that became a real collaboration. "
More often than not, it was what Brown had removed to Mangan. Of all the things that listeners hear about More or Less, clutter is not part of it. The first piece, Lynchpin, is singing, bbad, a minimalist drums and almost nothing else. Lay Low is even more naked, the voice that strikes in the treble is rarely heard and, so high in the mix, you can almost feel his breath blow on your ear.
"There were so many moments where we would have an excellent bed run and I would be" I can not wait to add fifty million things to that "and Drew was telling me to wait," I 'd have to wait. listen again for a moment and discover that it was probably ninety percent done, "he said. "We would do a song song and it would find out what it needed or not during this process, then it left to make it final.I was ordering for a long time, so it was very difficult to learn to trust.
But eliminate what he thought the songs would be, what would the sound be, finally released him to refine his performance and also to put everything in communication with lyrics. The writing on More or Less comes from a man very different from that of his previous albums. Mangan admits that the album "Looks like me more than ever. More sparse. Less meticulous. More children. Less time. More direct. Less metaphor. More discovery. Fewer young people More heat. Less chaos. "
If a song is a perfect example of where the married father who was raised in a tumultuous time is now, this is the Cold In The Summer self-deprecating song. Speculating that it is somebody who loses contact with youth culture and does not want to be "the kind of person who gets a cold in the summer," the song speaks openly about 39, honest transformation into "adult artist". It's a place that Mangan and his audience are all directed and he really operates with new materials such as driving Troubled Mind, or Just Fear.
This song was written after the election of Donald Trump, many panting with terror and holding their children nearby. In his case, it was his second son, who has just been born, who inspired the emotional clash of the song and the hope that the next generation will not ruin everything. His hope is that he can bring comfort and a sense of community to listeners with these ten new leads, so that people feel less alone.
"The record is different, more accessible and slightly stranger than anything I've done," he said. "It's certainly one of my best compositions and I agree that it's more widely accessible. I'm not a Pitchfork artist and I've never been, even though I was hoping and dreaming it would happen, in the end I want to be part of a relationship with an audience. "
More or less is serious about the intended purpose. Not only is he talking, but Mangan is actively involved in creating support for art in the community.
He co-founded Side Door with Laura Simpson, a professional in the music industry, to expand artists' access to the public. The organization badociates artists and hosts to present unique shows in the privacy of their home or any other private space. Mangan made his debut in his twenties playing house concerts and used this showcase for artists on his label Madic.
Madic recently released China Cloud, the first solo album of former Blacksmith guitarist and jazz genius, Gordon Grdina. Side Door works with an application that allows ticketing, reservations, etc.
"His in the beta phase now, with 800 users, which is fantastic and we are still looking for hosts, "he said. "Side Door is something really exciting for me and for building this connective tissue in the arts."
At one point, Mangan might have accepted to take advantage of this community spirit for the individual areas of celebrity. He shakes his head at this idea now. When recording More or Less, he had direct experience with someone from this rarefied world, a certain Paul McCartney.
It was a great advantage after being completely cleaned during a robbery in L.A., which required "two laptops, a ProTools platform, two hard drives, two bags, a pbadport; everything except my guitar. "
"We did a Lay Low pbad in the studio, and then Paul McCartney opened his head, which I suppose is just what he does because he is Paul McCartney," he said. "Nobody gets upset because he's so excited to see him. Imagine this existence, everyone is excited to see you forever? "
Although the audience is not as attentive at this level, Mangan is preparing to tour extensively to support More or Less, hitting Europe with Laura Gibson this month and spending the first two months of 2019 doing so. a Canadian road trip from one ocean to the other. He says he expects "a lot of singing" as his new tour group featuring players who can nail harmonies with ease.
Read more stories about local music and arts on vancouversun.com.
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