DAN MANGAN - Nice, Nice, Very Nice

Oh a whirling dervish and a dancing bear

Or a Ginger Rogers and a Fred Astaire

Or a teenage rocker or the girls in France

Yes, we all are partners in this cosmic dance

Nice, nice, very nice

So many people in the same device

(Kurt Vonnegut, “Cat's Cradle”)

The ability to sketch out, in just a few lines yet with great effectiveness, the co(s)mic dance of humanity, often leaving the reader with a bittersweet smile on their lips: this is an aspect of Kurt Vonnegut's writing that struck Dan Mangan back when, at sixteen, he first read “Cat's Cradle”, one of the American writer's most celebrated novels — and it's an aspect that surfaces today in the lyrics of the twenty-six-year-old Vancouver songwriter as well.

Put to the test with his second album, with “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” Mangan proves he's not just another Damien Rice wannabe. His shadowy voice gains depth and substance, his melodies tinged with romanticism ripple with new nuances, his verses are colored with vivid images: everything, in short, one might expect from an album that, right from its title, chooses to pay homage to Vonnegut's visionary pen.

Constantly poised between indie-rock and folk, “Nice, Nice Very Nice” is marked by a generous rainbow of sounds that, despite their uneven distribution across the tracks, lends the album a strong sense of cohesion and overall sturdiness — likely thanks in part to the skilled production work of John Critchley (Elliot Brood, Hidden Cameras).

Mangan's latest effort turns out to be a weightier work than its predecessor “Postcards And Daydreaming”, a songwriter-oriented album with which “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” perhaps still only shares an inspiration drawn from sounds deeply rooted in the American folk-rock tradition. The arrangements this time are richer and more polished, lending the record a kind of “sonic three-dimensionality”, but above all Mangan shows here a more personal and varied way of writing, freeing himself from an almost exclusive reliance on the ballad format and considerably broadening the musical territories he draws from. Through original stylistic touches and not always conventional melodic choices, moreover, the Canadian singer-songwriter manages to shake the dust off the classic tropes he employs, making them shine with renewed freshness.

This “handover” between old and new album had actually been foreshadowed by the EP “Roboteering”, which already featured no fewer than three of the tracks later found on “Nice, Nice, Very Nice”: it was impossible, even then, not to notice the triumphant horns in the closing bars of “Robots”, not to get swept up in the chase of guitars, banjo and bass in “Sold”, or to remain indifferent to the refined delicacy of “The Indie Queens Are Waiting”, where Mangan's whispers alternate with the enchanting warble of Veda Hille.

The album draws on numerous collaborations with leading names of the Canadian scene, among whom, besides Hille, mention must certainly go to Justin Rutledge, with whom Mangan shares the spotlight on the beautiful ode to Vancouver “Tina's Glorious Comeback”, and Mark Berube, whose voice joins Mangan's on the rollicking “Some People”, as well as on “Sold”.

It takes Mangan just a few lines, in “You Silly Git”, to sketch a self-mocking caricature of himself as the stereotypical songwriter: “I can hear the eyebrows raise when I start singing/ ‘Cause the songs I sing are all about myself/ You can read me like a book/ I’m not as clever as I look”. But “Nice, Nice, Very Nice” manages to escape the trap of cliché, venturing instead down paths where music and words rediscover all their expressive power.

The crescendo of “Fair Verona” accompanies the flight of Romeo and Juliet through the pale glow of a night in which the heart truly does seem to have something to do with the stars: “We can cut and paste the stars to our hearts/ And understand their language”. Life itself, in “Basket”, seems to take the shape of a puzzle always missing some lost piece at its centre (“I don't wanna be/ Just a wasted puzzle piece”).

It's “Robots”, however, that stands as the album's signature song, a perfect hymn to the misery and the nobility of our artificial existences: when its quivering drive swells into a whirlwind of handclaps, horns and voices, it becomes practically impossible not to join in the chorus: “Robots need love too/ They want to be loved by you”.

In the end, Dan Mangan is right: we are all robots. Automatons moving through life. And the only thing that saves us are those moments when our android heart can still bleed.

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12/11/2009