Dan Deacon: Bromst

By Alex on April 3, 2009 in main

To quote a good friend of mine from back home at the end of a very sweaty, 3-hour long dance binge, "Man -- there's just nothing like going to a good ol' Dan Deacon show, isn't there?"

And despite the whole "One of those bands you gotta see live" cliché, it's true. During the past five years, Mr. Deacon has managed to build quite a solid reputation for his 'quirky' (if I may dare use that adjective as a Carleton student) live act. After seeing Dan a few times, the average fan starts to catch on to his many nuances: Dan always has a light-up "trippy" green skull perched over his small desk, strobing lights as the music gets louder and louder. Dan never plays on stage; he always sets up at some arbitrary point deep within the crowd. Dan always, at some point, makes the audience create a tunnel with their overstretched arms for everyone else to run through as fast as they can. Dan always manages to play his unreleased song "Silence like the Wind Overtakes Me", an extraordinarily infectious crowd sing-a-long with a simple chorus (Silence like the wind overtakes me/Ooohhhhhhh), repeated over and over again as Dan builds layers and layers of sound over all the humdrum. And the most consistent and prevalent aspect of your typical Dan Deacon show is the beat - sometimes furious, sometimes a little more subdued, but it is always there.

So, why spend so much time describing a live show as a lead-in to an album review? Because "Bromst", Deacon's latest release, manages to capture this unforgettable live experience to the greatest extent that an album can. While 2007's release "Spiderman of the Rings" showcased Deacon's quirkier (or let's just say weird) side, there are only a few tracks (Crystal Cat, to name one) that recreate what it feels like to be shoved amongst a crowd of 20-something hipsters smelling of cigarettes, cheap beer, and body odor. But on Bromst, Deacon turns down the weird and turns up the noise, furious drums and looped cartoon vocals. The percussion is really the key to this album; from the first track, "Build Voice", Deacon establishes the pace that remains unrelentingly feverish with the exception of track #7, "Wet Wings", a strangely beautiful, poignant tune that does nothing but loop a bizarre vocal track over and over again. After "Wet Wings", the album immediately picks up where it left off until the end. As great as "Spiderman of the Rings" was, "Bromst" takes Deacon's sound one step further to actually create a coherent dance album, and not just another sequential playlist of odd experimental electronica songs.

At times, the sound on this album resembles some sort of neo-tribal stomp overshadowed by looped chants and electronic machines being torn apart and rebuilt again and again and again. Even listening to this now on headphones in a dark dorm room while my roommate is trying to sleep, I find it difficult not to convulsively bob my head up and down. So I give in. And so will you.

But really, you gotta see him live.

Dan Deacon - Build Voice

Dan Deacon - Get Older

Dan Deacon - Woof Woof

Dan Deacon - Wet Wings

Hide 3 comments.

Post Comment

Name:

Location:

Comment:

I am using URLs in my comment:

Download the Atom or RSS feed for this category.