Album Review

Dan Mangan + Blacksmith – Club Meds

• 12th Jan 2015

Dan Mangan + Blacksmith released their new album ‘Club Meds’ earlier this week on January 12 via City Slang, with the Vancouver-based artist returning after a few years out of the limelight and this time officially joining forces with his long-time band members to play under the moniker Dan Mangan + Blacksmith. It’s a crucial move towards a full band ensemble and, perhaps, a more experimental and collaborative, yet cohesive, writing process that has truly enabled Mangan to shine as a master songwriter of the highest degree. Already an accomplished lyricist and arranger, the scope of musical depth added by the rest of the band elevates Club Meds to a level rarely reached in popular music.

Tackling grand themes of numbness and perception, these anthemic discourses are perhaps similar to the approach taken by artists like John Grant, whose raw honesty and knowing witticisms imbue his songs with a deafening power of emotion. Through it all, Mangan’s signature vocals provide the perfect drawling, baritone vehicle for his musings on sedation, ranging from brooding storytelling to evangelistic hollering. ‘Mouthpiece’ is a churning, Wild West inspired example of the angst-ridden grandiosity that really cuts to the heart of the message Mangan preaches, as he drily laments “understand that sometimes we all must dance with fuckery, but everybody’s pissing in the well of our suffering.”

At it’s heart, Club Meds is the bared soul of a real artist – a stark and honest portrayal of the darker side of life seen through the focused lens of an analytical mind with a sharp tongue and a quick turn of phrase. Often ensconced within tempestuous, simmering and sinister multi-instrumental arrangements that are as much about the carefully placed silences as the complex, layered soundscapes they also inhabit, Mangans piquant and startlingly revelatory observations on life and the human condition are given a weighty credibility that few ever manage to achieve.

This is a powerful and evocative record that truly deserves the plaudits already being rightly heaped on it, a case of music coming into it’s own as an art form and means of expression carrying a message that can resonate with us all; especially given the current political climate and the identity crisis permeating Western cuture.

– Jamie Otsa

Venue: Club Meds
Support Band: City Slang