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Dan Mangan | |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Daniel Mangan |
| Born | (1983-04-28)April 28, 1983 (age 41) Smithers, British Columbia, Canada |
| Origin | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Genres | Indie rock,folk[1] |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals,guitar,piano,keyboards |
| Years active | 2003–present |
| Labels | Arts & Crafts,City Slang,Create/Control, File Under: Music, Caroline |
| Website | www |
Daniel Mangan (born April 28, 1983) is a Canadian musician. He has won twoJuno awards and has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Australia, having released 5 studio LPs and numerous EPs and singles. He has scored for feature film, as well as television for Netflix and AMC. He is also a co-founder of Side Door, a marketplace platform connecting artists with alternative venue spaces for in-person & online shows.[2]
In 2003, at 20 years old, Mangan completed his first set of recordings: an EP of simply recorded acoustic songs calledAll At Once. Five hundred copies were pressed and sold or given away throughout theVancouver area. With a bank loan and a small community of musicians who would offer cheap or free sessions, Mangan recordedPostcards & Daydreaming in the summer of 2005 with producer Daniel Elmes and good friend Simon Kelly. Mangan released the album independently at first, selling the album online and at live shows. In July 2007, Vancouver-based independent record label File Under: Music picked up the LP and re-released the album with new artwork and an extra track, "Ash Babe". The following March, the record was released inAustralia byABC/Warner.
In March 2009, Mangan's albumNice, Nice, Very Nice[3] was recorded inToronto at Green Door Studios with producer John Critchley, and featured an assortment of other Canadian artists such asVeda Hille,Justin Rutledge, Mark Berube,Hannah Georgas and members ofSaid The Whale,Major Maker, andElliott Brood. The album name was inspired by a line from AmericannovelistKurt Vonnegut's bookCat's Cradle, while musicallyNice, Nice, Very Nice has been compared toChad VanGaalen andBon Iver. The first two singles from his second full-length, "Robots" and "Road Regrets" earned airplay on local Vancouver radio stations, as well as on satellite radio stations such asThe Verge andCBC Radio 3.
In September 2009, Mangan was awarded "Artist of the Year" at theVerge Music Awards.[4] In 2010,Nice, Nice, Very Nice was licensed and released by Toronto-based independent record labelArts & Crafts in the United States and Europe (viaCity Slang). The album was shortlisted for thePolaris Music Prize.Nice, Nice, Very Nice was also awarded "iTunes Album Of The Year" for the Singer/Songwriter category and won threeWestern Canadian Music Awards for "Independent Album Of The Year", "Roots/Solo Album Of The Year" and "Songwriter Of The Year". "Robots" was named "Best Song" by the CBC Radio 3 BUCKY Awards.[5]
On November 15, 2019, Dan Mangan andArts & Crafts released the 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition ofNice, Nice, Very Nice. The 2-LP vinyl collection features previously unreleased demos and b-sides. The package includes an essay by Mangan about making the album and its commercial success.[6]
Throughout 2010 and 2011, Mangan began collaborating with musicians from Vancouver's experimental music scene. Enlisting drummer Kenton Loewen (Mother Mother, Submission Hold, Gord Grdina Trio), bassist John Walsh (Brasstronaut) and guitarist Gord Grdina (Gord Grdina Trio,Haram, East Van Strings) opened up relationships with other members of the city's avant-garde free-jazz community. As the ensemble worked toward a third LP, they began collaborating and touring with a large group of musicians who would sub in and out of the band including trumpeter JP Carter (Fond of Tigers,Destroyer), violinistJesse Zubot (Fond of Tigers,Hawksley Workman,Tanya Tagaq), pianist Tyson Naylor and cellistPeggy Lee (Mary Margaret O'Hara,Wayne Horvitz,Veda Hille). Mangan asked Seattle'sEyvind Kang (Bill Frisell,Beck,Laurie Anderson) to write orchestral arrangements for the forthcoming recordings.
Oh Fortune was recorded over six months throughout the 2010-11 winter with producerColin Stewart (Black Mountain,Ladyhawk,Yukon Blonde), the band recorded in short spurts at The Hive Creative Labs between tours and at Mangan's own home, coined "National Park Studios". It was released in September, 2011 in North America byArts & Crafts, with releases in the following months in Europe byCity Slang and in Australia viaABC. The album received extensive critical acclaim internationally and demonstrated the beginning of a new, more experimental era in Mangan's musical career.
In November 2011, Mangan was the subject of the CBC documentaryWhat Happens Next?, directed and produced byBrent Hodge and Jon Siddall.[7] It follows Mangan in the lead up to his sold-out show at theOrpheum Theatre in Vancouver.
At the2012 Juno Awards, Mangan was awardedNew Artist of the Year andAlternative Album of the Year forOh Fortune, and was also nominated forSongwriter of the Year andVideo of the Year for the music video for "Rows of Houses", directed by Jon Busby.[8]
Oh Fortune was also long-listed for the 2012Polaris Music Prize and received threeWestern Canadian Music Awards for "Rock Album of the Year", "Independent Album of the Year", and "Songwriter of the Year". To boot, "Rows of Houses" was named "Best Song" by theCBC Radio 3 Bucky Awards. Mangan has won six Buckys to date, the most winning artist in the award's history, and is the only artist to win "Best Song" more than once.
Focusing less on recruited orchestral performances and more on core band contribution, Mangan and his band began recording in late 2013 what would eventually be his 4th LP,Club Meds, released January 2015 (Arts & Crafts /City Slang /Create/Control). Throughout the process, the ensemble decided to release the album under the monikerDan Mangan + Blacksmith, highlighting and finally labelling the creative contributions from Grdina, Loewen, Walsh, Naylor, Carter and Zubot.
Club Meds was met with a wildly positive critical reception but a less overall popular one thanOh Fortune. The album received 4 Stars fromThe Guardian,The Observer &Q, and 8/10 fromDrowned In Sound &Uncut, leading to aMetacritic score of 79.Alexis Petridis featured the LP as a must-hear album[9] andGuitarist says ofClub Meds, "Just 13 days into 2015, Dan Mangan + Blacksmith fired a compelling early salvo in the album of the year stakes."[10] and one Canadian blogger writes, "Club Meds is singlehandedly proving that the LP format is not only alive, but worth fighting for. It is proof that a well crafted record is more than a collection of well crafted songs. Club Meds is a unified whole, tackling some of the most important problems in our collective lives. It is not simply the best album of 2015, but one of the most emotionally compelling albums of the last decade."[11]
Unmake, released digitally June 17, 2016, was a collection of four simple home recordings and the single "Race To The Bottom" featuring drummer Loel Campbell (Wintersleep,Holy Fuck) which was recorded at Afterlife Studios in Vancouver, BC and produced by John Raham. The five song EP features a cover ofRobyn's "Hang With Me", revisited stripped-down versions of "Kitsch" and "Forgetery" fromClub Meds (The latter featuring Tegan Quin ofTegan and Sara) and the song "Whistleblower", a B-side initially recorded with Blacksmith in 6/8 time signature forClub Meds, but re-worked acoustically in 4/4.
In the fall of 2018, Mangan released his fifth full length,More or Less, onArts & Crafts andCity Slang. The album featured production and mixing by Drew Brown (Beck,Charlotte Gainsbourg,Blonde Redhead),[12] with producer Simone Felice (Lumineers,Vance Joy,Jade Bird)[13] producing two songs ("Fool For Waiting" and "Troubled Mind"), which were mixed and engineered by Ryan Hewitt (Lumineers,Avett Brothers, Vance Joy).
Adam Feibel wrote forExclaim! Magazine, "In stark contrast with the intricate, full-bodied arrangements of Mangan's last couple records,More or Less is so deliberately soft, warm, cozy and minimal that it makes evenNice, Nice, Very Nice sound loud and busy."[14] Feibel goes on to say, "The sleeper hit here is "Lay Low," a song about taking time for yourself that, fittingly, features almost nothing but Mangan's own voice — and even then it's barely more than a whisper. It could be chilling if it wasn't so comforting. And while "Troubled Mind" is undoubtedly boisterous, it's the outlier." About "Troubled Mind" Mangan has said "...it’s funny. It’s pretty upbeat, but the lyrical content is not exactly sunny, shiny or lovey-dovey, so at first you never know how it’s gonna be received...it’s really cool to see people gravitate towards it."[15]
About the album as a whole, Mangan says, "“witnessing birth, and in some ways rebirth. It’s about feeling disconnected from a popular identity and becoming acclimated to a new one. It’s about raising kids in a turbulent world. It’s about unanswerable questions and kindness and friendship and fear.”
In April 2019, Mangan, "the man known as the nicest guy on the Vancouver music scene" performed two songs ("Troubled Mind" and "Just Fear") from the album onJimmy Kimmel Live![16]
In April 2022 he released the non-album single "In Your Corner (for Scott Hutchison)", a tribute toFrightened Rabbit bandleaderScott Hutchison following his death in 2018.[17] He followed up in July with "Fire Escape", the video for which starred actorSteven Ogg as a personification of a self-critical inner voice taunting and tormenting Mangan.[18]
Both songs were eventually announced as part of the tracklisting for his seventh studio album,Being Somewhere.[19] The album was released in 2022, and was shortlisted for the2023 Polaris Music Prize.[20]
In 2024 he releasedBeing Elsewhere Mix, an album inspired bymixtapes which blended rerecorded acoustic versions of some songs fromBeing Somewhere with several songs he had already released as standalone singles, including "Say When", "Sleep on the Floor" and "Find New Ways".[21]
After the touring cycle forOh Fortune, the band took a short hiatus. Dan became a father during this time and scored a soundtrack withJesse Zubot for the feature filmHector and the Search for Happiness (Simon Pegg,Rosamund Pike,Christopher Plummer,Toni Collette,Stellan Skarsgård,Jean Reno, directed byPeter Chelsom). For their work, Mangan and Zubot were nominated for aCanadian Screen Award in the category ofBest Original Score. In that same year, Dan was also nominated forBest Original Song forWants, a song he contributed to the filmThe Valley Below.
Between theClub Meds andMore or Less album cycles, Mangan scored the music for theNetflix animated show,Hilda, including the ending theme, as well as theCBC/AMC mini-series,Unspeakable.
Mangan, under the label Madic Records, (an imprint ofArts & Crafts Productions) has released LPs by acts such as Walrus andAstral Swans.[22] Mangan has also recorded and produced works for Astral Swans, including two tracks on 2015'sGood People Rock and 2018'sStrange Prison.
Mangan and his business partner Laura Simpson appeared in a Season 17 episode ofDragons' Den, pitching for an investment in his online concert platform Side Door.[23] They secured a deal fromArlene Dickinson.[23]
With various collections of musicians, Mangan has toured extensively throughout Europe, North America and Australia. They've shared stages withFather John Misty,The Walkmen,Japandroids,Jeff Mangum,Mumford & Sons,Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros,Missy Elliott,Kendrick Lamar,Lucinda Williams,Broken Social Scene,Tune-Yards,Arlo Guthrie,José González,Junip,Stars,Marina And The Diamonds,Phox,Sharon Van Etten,Run The Jewels,Hot Chip,Cake,Metric,The Decemberists,Julian Casablancas,Timber Timbre,Sarah Harmer,The Broken Family Band,Elliott Brood,The Acorn,Alison Krauss,Howe Gelb,Jackson Browne,Bowerbirds,The head and the heart,We Were Promised Jetpacks,Blind Pilot,Patrick Watson,Jenn Grant,Brett Dennen,KD Lang,Mother Mother,Great Lake Swimmers,Basia Bulat,Veda Hille,Hannah Georgas,Charlie Parr,Bear's Den,Hey Rosetta!,The Shins,Sam Roberts Band,Jason Collett,Bahamas,Rich Aucoin,Zeus,Macklemore,Vampire Weekend,City & Colour,Yukon Blonde,Sondre Lerche,Warpaint,Other Lives,Suuns,Spoon,Tegan and Sara,Lucius.[24]
On Canada Day in 2011 Mangan performed for theDuke andDuchess of Cambridge.
Dan Mangan (or Dan Mangan + Blacksmith) have been invited to perform at many international music festivals including:
Mangan's March 13, 2020 show at theDanforth Music Hall inToronto,Ontario was cancelled due to theCOVID-19 pandemic. In response, Mangan and his band played a half-hour set to the empty hall, which Mangan streamed onYouTube the following Monday as "Show to Nobody".[25]
In December 2021 he announced his first significant national tour since the pandemic shutdown, withGeorgia Harmer as the opening act.[26]
Mangan's family moved often, residing in both the provinces ofOntario andBritish Columbia, but primarily in his current residence ofVancouver. He was influenced by his parents' record collection, especially the music ofNick Drake andThe Beatles.[1] At sixteen, Mangan started a band called Basement Suite with some classmates and played gigs at local community centres. Though his family had returned to Vancouver by age two, he was born inSmithers, British Columbia.[27]
Mangan studied at theUniversity of British Columbia, earning a BA in English Literature.[28]
He lives in Vancouver with his wife Kirsten Slenning and two children.[29]
| Year | Album details |
|---|---|
| 2005 | Postcards & Daydreaming
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| 2009 | Nice, Nice, Very Nice
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| 2011 | Oh Fortune
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| 2015 | Club Meds(credited as Dan Mangan + Blacksmith)
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| 2018 | More or Less
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| 2020 | Thief
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| 2022 | Being Somewhere
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| 2024 | Being Elsewhere Mix
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| Year | EP details |
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| 2003 | All At Once
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| 2009 | Roboteering
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| 2012 | Radicals
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| 2016 | Unmake[30]
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| Year | Artist | Song | Album |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Astral Swans with Dan Mangan | "You Are A Runner & I Am My Father's Son" (Wolf Parade cover) | Good People Rock |
| 2018 | Astral Swans | "Controls" | Strange Prison |
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