Last month, Dan Mangan headed east from Vancouver to play the Mercury Lounge in NYC to introduce a batch of new songs he’ll be releasing on September 27th. His new album, Oh Fortune, is a bit of a departure from his last album Nice, Nice, Very Nice which is a big plus because he’ll be able to avoid the Mumford and Sons comparisons that landed on him even though his album was out before theirs. The new songs are a bit more filled-out and edgy and a little less rootsy and folky.
The first thing that caught my attention once I arrived at Mercury was that I thought I recognized a guy I knew from Vancouver named Colin. Sure enough, once Dan took the stage Colin was playing bass (you should check out one of his older bands on CBC here). One of the guitarists wasn’t able to make it and normally it might not have been a big deal but the new songs could have used the extra sonic edge. The new songs did keep this audience engaged which sometimes can be tough. When some of his older songs came on I could hear people singing along up front which inspired me to join in on occasion. One benefit to playing a small room like Mercury is that you can unplug, jump on a table in the middle of the audience, belt out a song and everyone can still hear. Which is exactly what happened at the very end of the night when everyone was singing along to “Robots.” I have a feeling this will be one of those shows I’ll reference in a few years from now once Dan Mangan has outgrown small venues and plays all the big festivals.
[…] they played a fantastic set. Their new tour was high on our must-sees, especially with opener Dan Mangan for some of the West Coast dates. Gregory Alan Isakov (Boulder, CO) was the opener for the Brooklyn […]