Dark & hypnotic
For anyone familiar with Dan Mangan’s catalogue, it would have been hard to imagine the ubiquitous nice guy producing one of the darkest, most musically adventurous Canadian albums of the year. Yet, with Club Meds, the Vancouver singer-songwriter and his nimble band Blacksmith have done just that, constructing a prog-y whirlwind that touches on everything from the dystopia of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to the finer synchronistic points of the French Revolution and Occupy Wall Street. The Post’s Jonathan Dekel recently spoke with Mangan and drummer Kenton Loewen about Canadian identity and the temporal power of polyrhythms.
Q You’ve become one of those acts that will steadily play Canada Day. Do you see yourself as a prototypical Canadian artist? Mangan It’s funny because I feel like I am a very proud Canadian. But I certainly don’t just want to have a Canadian career. I feel like I love the idea of touring all over the world and calling Canada home. I love it.
Q Club Meds is a notable departure from your previous material. Musically, it reminds me of Radiohead’s Amnesiac in the sense that it takes jazz instrumentation and applies it to EDM arrangements. Mangan I think of something like “Pyramid Song,” which is in 4/4 but has a polyrhythmic feel. In that case, you’re getting a very accomplished feel drummer who can do something which isn’t just rock. Kenton can play rock but he’s cut his teeth largely in punk and free jazz and one of his specialties is polyrhythms so this record is laden with them. It’s all over the place. Loewen (Guitarist) Gord (Grdina) and I played a lot of middle eastern and African music together and there’s that relationship with how time works. So we brought a cycling sensibility to songs. It makes it like a dream. Mangan It’s hypnotic. Loewen It really is. It takes me out of the experience of a single location where the music is. There’s a lot of dreamy, time shifting stuff going on.
Q Lyrically, the album has an overarching theme of sedation as a means of escape. That’s some pretty dark stuff for a new dad. Mangan I think a lot of new parents will tell you it’s a very liberating thing and it’s also very intense. I feel more calm then I’ve ever really been. Having the kid really mellowed me out, in a way. So, sure, the lyrics are dark but I don’t see that as a bad thing. I feel like part of the reason I can enjoy the light in the world, and I really, really do enjoy the light in the world, is because I’m OK with the dark. That’s what this record’s about. It’s about not hiding from the dark because when you do you also limit the light in your life and you end up in this very narrow middle ground. We all cope in different ways and some of those ways are helpful and healthy and some of them make life miserable and numb and make life apathetic. This record is about being awake and being alive and a big part of that is accepting the dark.