I was first put on to Mr Mangan last year by one of my fellow music-loving mates, Leonie. She's one of my Dutchies and has excellent taste in music so I was more than open to her suggestion. The result was the fairly heavy rotation of Dan's 2009 album Nice, Nice, Very Nice 'NNVN' (yep it's a Kurt Vonnegut reference). It's a fun album chock full of skilfully writtenl songs about a myriad of different subjects such as robot love, pining for your home whilst on tour and how humans fit into this thing we call life. I have to say I had a great response to it do I was keen to see what Dan was going to offer up live.
I made it to the venue in time to see the last couple of songs by support group Zeus. They are a Toronto based unit so not physical comrades of Dan's (who is from Vancouver). They make plenty of noise and have a real 70s feel to them. It's not particularly ringing my bell but they get a great response from the crowd.
Dan is on at 9.30pm. He has a full band with him - drums, bass, guitar and even trumpet - and they start without ceremony. Well I say start, but to be absolutely honest it's hard to tell whether they are trying to set an ambient mood or tuning their instruments - we soon work out that it is the former and that they are in fact segueing into About as Helpful as You Can Get Without Being Any Help from his latest album Oh Fortune.
This is not the acoustic Dan Mangan I was anticipating, but I enjoy the fact that he is immediately stepping outside my expectations and pushing the audience beyond it's comfort zone. This is what a true artist should do in my opinion.
It takes the band the first couple of tunes to get into the swing of things - the songs from Oh Fortune are not as immediately accessible as those on NNVN but it's good to know that Dan is stepping outside the well delineated 'folk-rock' mould. It's a very big sound that they are bringing to the stage and I'm finding that the sound mix is not particularly great - as Thom Yorke would say it's 'buzzing like a fridge' at the back of the room where I am standing but to be fair that's not unusual in this box of a room.
The crowd also warm up sufficiently to get into NNVN track Sold. Catchy little number that one - 'it hurts, it kills, it screams' - yep sounds like a normal day at work for me! I always wonder whether the musicians I see realise that they are living the dream whilst us mere unmusical plebs deal with the rat race - these guys are at least having a good time.
Dan is active all over the stage, even dropping back to his guitar player's mic at times to do his own backing vocals (with some effect assistance).
The next highlight for me is Basket - which Dan says is a song really about birth - it's more a song about re-birth at various stages of life to me but let's not be pedantic about these things! This song showcases Dan's songwriting talents - the lyrics are incredibly visual and compassionate at the same time:
"We are old
And our son took the dog away
And fair enough, guess we're tired all the time
All the time
And you know dogs they need ample time outside"
This is closely followed by an all in singalong to one of Dan's most well-known tunes - Robots. I love this track and the audience are well up for some backing vocal duties.
Somehow we've managed to wizz through the set and an hour and bit bin we are already heading towards the 11pm curfew time and Dan notes that the standard action would be for them to leave the stage and come back on however its his view that the best use of their time is to ditch the encore break and just play to the curfew- I am down with that!
We are back into some more NNVN territory with Fair Verona where Dan is cut and pasting the starts to his heart - the boy has got some charisma and he's working it overtime at the moment.
He then invites the members of Zeus back on to the stage for a rendition of Elliott Smith's Waltz #2. It's a cool cover and the stage is suddenly very full of Canadians tearing it up.
Dan saves the best for last - he declares that he is coming on down into the crowd to get amongst it and then gives us some specific backing vocal duties - there's no words, it's just a melody which he is going to sing over and off he goes into So Much For Everyone. It sounds fabulous and the audience collectively decide to really bring it. I live for this shit at gigs - it's entirely engaging and this last five minutes is worth the ticket price alone.
Dan has certainly showcased his talents tonight and I'm glad to have had an opportunity to see him at such close quarters.
I've had myself another night of musical goodness at Bush Hall for a tenner - long may this trend continue!
More pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59794835@N00/sets/72157629602394848/
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