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Bar Biaggio
If you want to enjoy a quick and casual business lunch on the water, look no further than Bar ...
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Dan Mangan
The Canadian indie favourite has been seducing audiences all around the country during the last couple of weeks. His single Robots, an indie/folk song about keeping it real amid a world of rampant technology, gained him recognition by Britain's NME magazine as one of Canada's most promising acts. We caught up with the sweet-natured Dan in a Surry Hills pub while he was in town and couldn't help but be charmed by his Michael Buble-esque charisma.
How would you describe your music?
It falls into the category of folk, but it also has a neo contemporary indie rock/ pop element to it. There is some fairly bluegrass baselines on that record, but it's not a bluegrass record. It's a smorgasbord of sounds.
Some have compared you to the likes of Bon Iver and Radiohead.
I would gladly take those comparisons. I wouldn't claim to be as good as either of those bands, but I definitely draw some influence from them for sure.
Besides playing gigs, what have you been up to in Australia?
I've been to the beach, demoing on my laptop and recording some stuff for a new perspective album, and played some gigs with Charlie Parr - a kind of old-time sounding banjo guitar player, heavy on the finger-picking.
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Your new album was released last Friday in Australia. Tell us about the album title Nice, Nice, Very Nice. Where did that come from?
It's from Cat's Cradle (by Kurt Vonnegut Jr), one of my favourite books. There is a poem in it that says, "Chinese dentist and a British queen all put together in the same machine. Nice, nice, very nice. So many different people in the same device." I read that book when I was 17, and the last part just resonated with me. It kind of stuck in my head. Even though he was a novelist, I probably take a lot of inspiration from the way he would view the world. It's science fiction but it's full of social commentary. It's not science fiction like Star Trek; it's like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is an amazing writer and he has a way at poking fun at everything but somehow coming across as a good person and not a jerk. It inspired some of the songs on the record.
Tell us about your song Robots.
It's about a few different things. It's saying "the closer we get to technology and the more invested we personally get, the more important it is to maintain those human relationships that really make us who we are". There is also the element that there are people that are so affected (by technology) that they've forgotten how to be human beings and good people. And the line "robots need love too" is saying that those people who aren't acting like human beings, but are acting like cells being controlled by the atmosphere around them, are probably the ones that need the most hugs.
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How would you describe your music?
It falls into the category of folk, but it also has a neo contemporary indie rock/ pop element to it. There is some fairly bluegrass baselines on that record, but it's not a bluegrass record. It's a smorgasbord of sounds.
Some have compared you to the likes of Bon Iver and Radiohead.
I would gladly take those comparisons. I wouldn't claim to be as good as either of those bands, but I definitely draw some influence from them for sure.
Besides playing gigs, what have you been up to in Australia?
I've been to the beach, demoing on my laptop and recording some stuff for a new perspective album, and played some gigs with Charlie Parr - a kind of old-time sounding banjo guitar player, heavy on the finger-picking.
read on below advertisement
Your new album was released last Friday in Australia. Tell us about the album title Nice, Nice, Very Nice. Where did that come from?
It's from Cat's Cradle (by Kurt Vonnegut Jr), one of my favourite books. There is a poem in it that says, "Chinese dentist and a British queen all put together in the same machine. Nice, nice, very nice. So many different people in the same device." I read that book when I was 17, and the last part just resonated with me. It kind of stuck in my head. Even though he was a novelist, I probably take a lot of inspiration from the way he would view the world. It's science fiction but it's full of social commentary. It's not science fiction like Star Trek; it's like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is an amazing writer and he has a way at poking fun at everything but somehow coming across as a good person and not a jerk. It inspired some of the songs on the record.
Tell us about your song Robots.
It's about a few different things. It's saying "the closer we get to technology and the more invested we personally get, the more important it is to maintain those human relationships that really make us who we are". There is also the element that there are people that are so affected (by technology) that they've forgotten how to be human beings and good people. And the line "robots need love too" is saying that those people who aren't acting like human beings, but are acting like cells being controlled by the atmosphere around them, are probably the ones that need the most hugs.
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