The Juno-winning musician and songwriter rides a layered new album into Saturday’s Massey Hall show.

Nick Krewen

Music, Published on Wed Feb 25 2015

Dan Mangan is going deep.

The 31-year-old eloquent, observant singer and songwriter has returned with a newly named band Blacksmith to introduce what’s arguably his finest album to date in Club Meds.

The Smithers, B.C., native views the CD, his first since 2011’s Juno-winning Oh Fortune, as a new chapter in his life, following some life changes that included becoming a parent for the first time.

“It’s great,” says Mangan, down the line from Montreal, of son Jude. “For myself, it forced me to slow down a little bit. I have a tendency to be hyperactive — not really in my demeanour, but just in my incessant need to be working on things. If I’m idle for five seconds, I start to go crazy.
“So I think it forced me to stop and slow down and go ‘wait, wait, wait: Maybe all you need to do right now is hold this little human and enjoy that.’ So that’s been really good for me. I feel a little bit calmer since I’ve had a kid, which is crazy, because my life is a million times more hectic.”

Mangan, who headlines at Massey Hall Saturday night with his band Blacksmith (John Walsh, Gord Grdina and Kenton Loewen), special guest Hayden and Calgary’s Astral Swans, says the break after touring Oh Fortune allowed him to sit back and reassess his situation.

“We were pretty beat at the end of the 2012 Oh Fortune cycle. The band would be in the airport terminal, and we’d look around at each other and we were all bagged with circles under our eyes,” he laughs. “Even before I had the band, I’d been touring alone a good seven years, sometimes 200 shows a year.
“So I thought, okay, let’s take a breath, you know — and coming back after a little bit of time, it’s amazing what it did for the band. The mojo was intensified and everybody came at the new material with a lot of excitement and new energy and ready to grab it by the balls and go for it.”

Club Meds displays a continued maturity in the fully realized Mangan sound: intoxicating melodies and pointedly astute lyrics wrapped in soothingly warm and sometimes lush alt-rock arrangements.

Mangan says he’s become a better communicator.

“I’ve grown up a little bit, I’ve learned to articulate myself in different ways,” he admits. “And I’ve felt, in some ways, I’ve always been a little bit political. I’ve always had opinions coming through in the songs, but I think I was a little bit timid to really dig into it, partly because I don’t think I knew how to articulate these things through song when I was younger.”

Club Meds also has an irresistible momentum about it, with a strong, natural flow almost dreamily tying together songs like “Vessel” and “Mouthpiece.”
“It’s a fairly romantic and nostalgic notion at this point, but I still have a tender place for the album as a whole piece . . . I like how the album bobs and weaves and goes in all these different directions and takes you on a bit of a journey,” Mangan says.

One of the themes on Club Meds is hinted at in the title.

“I feel like it’s about sedation,” Mangan confirms. “It’s also the willful blindness, the complacence of delusion that we all wander in and out of. As much as it’s about sedation, it’s also about being awake.
“For myself, I can think about those moments of being truly awake and connected with other people and connect with other streams of thought in the universe. You know those moments where you feel really lucid and sort of tapped in and alive, like your blood is flowing. That’s a truly beautiful place to be.”

Dan Mangan forges new frontiers with Blacksmith | Toronto Star