Feb. 03, 2010 - Issue #746: Spine

On the Record

Dan Mangan

Dan Mangan talks about the making of his latest album

Dan Mangan's been on a bit of an upswing lately—his sophomore album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice, has been garnering some impressive praise, his shows are getting more and more crowded and he's even taken his songs overseas to Australia—but it's been a long time coming. The Vancouver songwriter is a hard-working-type who's been plying his trade and writing a stack of new songs ever since his 2005 full-length debut Postcards and Daydreaming. Mangan spoke to Vue Weekly while on the tail end of his Australian tour about the creation of Nice, Nice, Very Nice.

VUE WEEKLY: How long did it take to make Nice, Nice, Very Nice, from the initial songwriting through to the end of the recording?
DAN MANGAN: The songs started coming together just after I recorded Postcards and Daydreaming in the summer of 2005. I think "Basket" was written within a few weeks of mastering P&D. We mastered NNVN in January of 2009, so there was a lot of time for digesting, processing, second-guessing, etc. I didn't really write a batch of songs for the new album, but they were collected over that stretch of years—sometimes I'd get really active and spew out a few songs in a week, and some of them took months to finish. The songs for NNVN were spawned over such a long period of time that I think we were able to capture a lot of different vibes and really pick the best ones.

VW: When you were writing the songs, did you come at them in a particular way: lyrics first? Music first?
DM: When I first started writing songs, the music always came first—then a series of mumbles would work their way into words. I think as I got more comfortable as a writer, the lyrics started becoming more and more important to me. These days it can come from any direction, and take any amount of time to finish. Sometimes a pile of lyrics will find a melody and guitar, sometimes it's just a simple rhythm or vibe that will stem a song. I like to keep it different, and changing. Every time I feel like I've gotten locked in a "style" I start aching for change.

VW: How did you choose the other players on the album? Are they people you play with regularly, or were they brought in specifically for the album?
DM: The stand-in band were people I'd been playing with for a few years. John Walsh (bass), Kenton Loewen (drums) and Aaron Joyce (guitar/weisenborn) really made up the staple instruments. Aaron also did a number of arrangements (horns/strings) for the album and it was great to have people involved who already really knew the songs inside-out. The album credits list 20-something people, though. I kept asking people to be involved and they kept saying, "Yes" —it was so great to have so many talented people dropping in their creativity here and there. Some cameos are more prevalent or noticeable (Veda Hille) and some are more subtle (Mark Sasso from Elliott Brood). Either way, everyone kept blowing me away with their performances. There were definitely varying levels of familiarity—both in a personal sense, and in a musical sense. I'd toured with Elliott Brood a bunch, and same with Mark Berube. Veda, however, I had met years earlier (she played at my sister's wedding and went to highschool with my brother-in-law) but it was a bit of a cold-call asking her to play.
 
VW: Did you bring the songs to the studio fully formed, or are they sketches that are then filled out as a group?
DM: Totally varied. "Robots," "Some People" and "Sold" were pretty much together beforehand (though the up-tempo clapping section of "Sold" was a last-minute addition). "Tina's Glorious Comeback" was one of the last songs we tracked, and it was just a matter of throwing a lot of ideas at the wall to see what would stick. "The Indie Queens Are Waiting"  swas a completely different song before Veda's duet vocals—she really changed the song's vibe, and I loved the direction it took. "Set the Sails" was originally twice as long with an extra verse. John (Critchley, producer) figured we should cut the song entirely, but my gut wanted to fight for it—I suggested shortening the song, and now it sounds simply like an extra track to the album, which is kind of cool.
I like the idea of approaching the studio not knowing what is going to happen. Experimentation should abound within the studio walls, I figure. It might be different for a rock band where the parts should all be written and rehearsed, but for now I'm pretty happy to go in somewhat blind in some areas. The important thing is not to just stick to an arrangement formula: it's important to try to bring out the best aspects of each individual song and hope that they fit together nicely.

VW: What did producer John Critchley bring to the album?
DM: Lots of experience. John was great. He's a really even-keeled kind of guy, and I was more up and down during the recording period, so he was a bit of a ying to my yang. He's a great engineer and I love the sound he brought out of the instruments. I like how the album sounds nice and full, but yet kind of rough and unpolished. That's exactly what I heard in Mountain Meadows by Elliott Brood, and the reasoning behind why I asked John to work on Nice, Nice, Very Nice. He's also been a staple in the Toronto indie-music-scene for years and his studio seemed to be a drop-in zone for all kinds of great Canadian musicians, which was fun.
 
VW: Were there any other songs written that were left off the album?
DM: Many. I narrowed 30 songs to 22, then sent them to John and the label, who helped me narrow them down to 16, then to 13. There was only one song that was recorded that isn't included, but we didn't get very far with it—I don't even think there was enough work done on it to call it a B-side. It's called "Kerouac Spelled Wrong"—I wouldn't be surprised if it showed up on the next album.
 
VW: Did the Roboteering EP have any effect on the way that the full-length turned out?
DM: I would say Nice, Nice, Very Nice had an effect on the way Roboteering EP turned out. The album was finished when the EP was assembled. We couldn't put it out until months later for a few reasons, but we wanted to put something out and not just sit on it, so I found a few extra B-side-type recordings and put them together with a few tracks from the album we felt were a good cross-section of what was to be expected on the full-length. It was cool, we just released it off-stage and online, and it worked really well to muster some excitement for the LP.
 
VW: If you were to trace the musical map that led you to Nice, Nice, Very Nice, what would it look like?
DM: The scenic route, no doubt. A lot of the press I've received has alluded to the idea that I'm young for my sound, but I feel like I've taken the long route to getting to here. Postcards and Daydreaming bounced around for years. It took me a seemingly really long time to figure out exactly what kind of music I wanted to make. In a sense, I'm still not there, but am excited to keep learning and growing.
I went from bad high school band to solo acoustic open-mic guy to solo acoustic open-mic guy with a demo to solo open-mic guy with an album to solo international-touring artist and money-loser to dude who had spent far too much time with the name "Dan Mangan" floating around and couldn't go back and make a moniker, no matter how many marquees had the name spelled wrong to international-touring artist only beginning to understand what's available for someone who works hard enough
 
VW: Is there anything else you’d like to say about the album or the making of it?
DM: I hope I'm able to listen to it in a decade without cringing. V

Fri, Feb 5 (6 pm & 7:30 pm)
Dan Mangan
Haven Social Club, $15

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