Dan Mangan’s sophomore release, Nice, Nice, Very Nice wins the Most Pleasant Surprise Of 2009 Award at HearYa. I hadn’t heard of this Canadian songwriter prior to the mailman delivering the album and it’s been stuck in my head for weeks.
While you may be thinking verses of a Cracker song, saying to yourself “The world needs another folk singer like I need a hole in my head,” please stop yourself. Dan Mangan proves to be more than a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar. He’s a masterful lyricist that enlists a broad spectrum of instrumentation to create an album worthy of the Kurt Vonnegut poem that is its namesake.
While my made up award may not give much credence, Dan Mangan also recently took home the Verge XM Artist Of The Year Award. His music brings to bear the absurdity of life with songs about robots, coffee sweats and Tina Turner comebacks wrapped in a sound that combines Mark Lanegan’s graveled vocals with Josh Ritter’s good humor and pop sensibility.
Dan Mangan deserves much more buzz than has been built thus far. His music is custom built for people that like sad words enveloped in happy songs and for those that don’t take themselves too seriously. There’s two songs and a video below that serve as a good appetizer for what Nice, Nice, Very Nice is all about.
Video: Dan Mangan – The Indie Queens Are Waiting
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Nice, nice.
From Denmark, the pleasant surprise of the year is the band The Rumour Said Fire and their lovely folk pop which fill old and young people with good memories of a time they may or may not have experienced:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi8di1WlKyw
Just heard Dan on CBC Radio 1 in Ottowa. Great find! Really taken with the last half of Robots, and loved the video for Indie Queens as well. Hope to hear more from him soon.
Very nice! I have had Robots recorded on my XM Player for a month and decided I’d look him up on the net. Ican’t quit playing his music. Very refreshing.
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