Dan Mangan

NPR First Listen!

The follow up to 2011’s highly acclaimed, multi JUNO-Award winning Oh Fortune sees the Vancouver-based artist return and officially join forces with his long-time, now integral, band members from the Vancouver experimental music scene to play under the moniker Dan Mangan + Blacksmith.

Blacksmith is Kenton Loewen (drums), Gordon Grdina (guitar), John Walsh (bass) and often JP Carter (trumpet), Jesse Zubot (violin) and Tyson Naylor (keys). They bring an unmistakable character to Club Meds; a stark glassy edge that swells and sways like a roaring ocean. Through a fog of analog feedback loops and synths, the band's performances breathe deeply and steadily like a dragon at rest.

The album title, Club Meds, is one of the driving lyrical motions of the record; the idea that we’re all on vacation from having to be honest with ourselves – that sometimes it’s easier to medicate than deal with reality.

“Club Meds is about sedation” Mangan writes in the record’s liner notes. “Sedation can be chemical, but not exclusively so. There is a great vacation from actuality going on. Maybe there always has been. It seems like everybody else is already at the party and that life is somehow easier or more fun under the fog.”

And yet, for all its social commentary, Club Meds was never intended as a grandiose political record, nor is the outlook overtly cynical; more a touching and thought provoking collection of deep rooted sentiments and observations.

RIYL: Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Deep Dark Woods, Field Report, Father John Misty
DIRTY: #3, 9
TRY: #2, 5, 1

Download full album here:
https://www.piratepirate.com/downloads/

More Info Here:
http://danmanganmusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/danmanganmusic
https://twitter.com/danmanganmusic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Mangan