A very nice dude obsessed with robots
Dave Jaffer
Dan Mangan on Vonnegut, music awards and plumbing
The first piece of Dan Mangan's music I ever received was the Roboteering EP, and two things about it struck my fancy before I'd even removed the plastic: the impressively clean, minimal cover art, and the fact that it was called Roboteering and was led off by a song called Robots. Full disclosure: I am really into robots. What's more, Mangan is too."I do dig robots," he says. "I think they're pretty rad."
Naturally, the epic chat Vancouver-based Mangan and I had wasn't about robots. It was mostly about writing and about how his last two releases - the Roboteering EP and his full-length Nice, Nice, Very Nice - have propelled him into the upper echelons of the Canadian indie music scene. Released in August, Nice, Nice, Very Nice has received rave reviews across the board and won Mangan the XM Verge Artist of the Year award and the $25,000 that comes with it. And, though I'm speculating, I'm probably not the only one who thinks that, right now, Nice, Nice, Very Nice has to be considered a shoo-in for next year's Polaris Music Prize shortlist.
Humble and thoughtful, Mangan isn't thinking that far ahead, or ahead at all even though he's about to assail the longest stint of touring of his career. If he is, though, he's probably thinking about the future in terms of how many of his songs are informed by being away from the people and places near to his heart.
"I spend a lot of time in bus stations and airports and thinking about home, and calling
home, and thinking about my family, and how terrible it would be if something happened at home while I was away that I couldn't come back in time for, or something," he says. "I did a lot of thinking in a lot of time on my own, and that's largely where a lot of these songs came from, me sitting around trying to debate in my head all the silly things that artists think about: Is this worthwhile? Am I any good at this? Am I terrible? Are people responding to this? Am I going broke for nothing or is this worthwhile?"It's interesting that he phrases it like this, because the success of Nice, Nice, Very Nice has more or less answered all of these questions. Easily among 2009's best-reviewed albums, it's made Mangan a household name all over Canada and added yet another record to the pile named in honour of things Kurt Vonnegut wrote.
Wait, what?
"When I was about 16, my girlfriend at the time gave me a copy of Cat's Cradle, where ['Nice, Nice, Very Nice'] came from," he says. "Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five I think are two of the finest works of literature that I know exist. I would put those on the Best Forty Books Ever list. I love the idea that he can sum up all of humanity in three lines, and make you grin about it. He's got this way of subtly painting pictures that make us realize just how ridiculous we all are, and at the same time make you feel that it's okay that we're so absurd."
This subtle, Vonnegut-like comedy and charm is very much a part of what Mangan so skillfully does with many of his songs, but it wasn't always like that. "I've written hundreds of fucking terrible songs," he says. "Over a very long period of time, you kind of whittle away. It's kind of like the 10,000 hours rule [from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers]: If you want to be the best plumber in town, you've got to do 10,000 hours of plumbing."
The 10,000 hours rule notwithstanding, part of Mangan's success these days is due to the quality and popularity of Canadian music that in any way evokes the "folk" descriptor. Mangan is acutely aware of this, and says he's also bolstered by the strength, inclusiveness and breadth of the Canadian musical community as a whole.
"Bands like The Acorn and Patrick Watson and Elliott Brood [are] a great example. These are all bands that you could put them on at a folk festival and they'll kill, or you could put them on at, like, Virgin Festival, and they'll kill. You can put them on any stage; they could be opening up for Bon Iver or they could be opening up for The New Pornographers, and nobody would blink. I don't know how that happens, but [there's] this great cross-genre respect that's happening in the alt-indie-folk-roots-pop world right now."
Laughing, he realizes how ridiculous that last part sounded.
"I don't think I could repeat it if I tried."
Dan Mangan
w/ Will Currie & The Country French
@ Algonquin College
Oct. 14
@ Black Sheep Inn
Oct. 17
Nice, Nice, Very Nice! isn't going to just make the shortlist. It will take the prize. That album is so strong beginning to end that it's IMPOSSIBLE for me to imagine somebody putting out a stronger contender.
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Darcy McGee
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