Dan Mangan + Blacksmith
Club Meds
Reviewed by: Max Miller
It’s possible that Club Meds, Dan Mangan’s fourth album and first as Dan Mangan + Blacksmith, will finally stop Americans from saying, “Who the hell is Dan Mangan?” While the Vancouver-based singer-songwriter won two JUNO Awards for his previous album Oh Fortune, he has yet to cross over in the U.S. for some reason. Club Meds possesses two critical ingredients that could finally speed up the process: 1. It addresses our predilection as modern human beings for staving off existential angst via self-medication — ever a popular subject in the land that birthed Xanax and Prozac — and, 2. It showcases the kind of Americana-by-way-of-electronic-music grandeur perfected by Wilco, perhaps the most quintessentially American indie rock band of the 21st century.
From the beginning of opener “Offred” with its anxious ticking-clock beat and climactic jazzy guitar solo that is swallowed by buzzing synths, Mangan establishes the connecting theme of panic giving way to calm, only for the cycle to repeat. Highlights like “Vessel” and the ballad-like “XVI” subvert the tone seemingly set by their instrumentation. The former sounds like the year’s first stadium anthem, but the bouncy, uplifting music distracts from the chorus’s message of our communal responsibility for societal shortcoming — “Takes a village to raise a fool.” The latter layers soft strings and horns over its outro as if to wash away the pessimistic takeaway of “We all see the farce but we don’t mention/ Mention the castle of cards/ What’s there to say?/ Let them eat cake.” The age-old dismission, often misattributed to Marie Antoinette, speaks volumes to mankind’s ability to ignore the problems of our neighbors.
Club Meds is a grim album beneath all its lushly-orchestrated production, but one that will hopefully be embraced as food for thought rather than simply a banquet for the ears.
Rating: Bad-Ass
