Dan Deacon: "Bromst"

Dan Deacon gets unfairly lumped together with Girl Talk when people talk about the indie dance music scene.  While the two have toured together, they are trying to achieve different ends with their laptop based music.  Girl Talk takes preexisting popular music samples and, while keeping them recognizable, connects them together to create new songs.  Deacon, on the other hand, takes unrecognizable samples and loops and builds his own songs from the ground up.  His last album, Spiderman of the Rings, had a tremendous “mad scientist” feel to it.  I hope that on his new album, Bromst, Deacon takes his obvious genius for building electronic songs and combines it more fully with the flashes of beauty that certain songs on Spiderman showed.  I’m going to attempt to “live-blog” my first listen to the album (thanks to NPR’s streaming site).  Enjoy!

 

Track 1: “Build Voice”

In the opening track, Deacon builds his sonic layers on top of a straightforward piano riff.  I like how the vocals do not dominate the mix, but take a background role to the driving drums that pick up in the middle of the track and the aforementioned piano line.  Already, this album sounds grander than Spiderman of the Rings.

Track 2: “Red F”

The serenity of “Build Voice” disappears when the first noise blast of “Red F” begins.  This song starts big, backs down, and then brings back the opening riff in the coda. 

Track 3: “Paddling Ghost”

Another catchy melody line starts this track, seemingly played on a vibraphone this time.  One of the highlights of Spiderman of the Rings, for me, was “Wham City” because Deacon allowed understandable vocals to compliment his frantic backing tracks.  Yet, so far on Bromst, the beats remain the star and the vocals get twisted and re-pitched to take a supplementary role, which works well, but gets tiring while straining to understand track after track.  This is why Deacon’s music is so hard for me to listen to because I put an emphasis on the meaning of lyrics when I listen to songs.  But, the songs are so catchy, especially this one!

Track 4: “Snookered”

I like that this album seems to bring other performers into the songs, rather than all the music emanating from Deacon’s laptop and drum machine.  Music seems so much more alive when a real drummer is pounding away the beat.  Ah, and we finally have our first understandable chorus.  This song has the perfect balance of crazy and song structure.  The beeps and blats of the electronic samples compliment the more traditional song elements to elevate the track.  The breakdown in the middle, while a bit strange, keeps the song moving forward before the chorus is reintroduced at the end. A favorite after one listen.

Track 5: “Of The Mountain”

This track has a very trance like feel to it.  The drumming reminds me of tribal beats.  This song feels like Deacon is falling back on his old tricks though and not keeping up with the elevated presence of the first four tracks on Bromst. Also, the song structure is so similar to “Snookered” that I wonder what Deacon thought this track added to the album.

Track 6: “Wet Wings”

“Wet Wings” is completely different than any of the earlier songs on Bromst.  Deacon takes a single woman singing a line and repeats and twists it into a chorus of sound, with minimal electronic interference.  This track comes off as more of a palette cleanser or interlude than a fully developed song, but still very good.

Track 7: “Woof Woof”

A very playful song.  It reminds me of the “Woody Woodpecker,” the first track on Spiderman.  Another song with a clever and catchy melody, but I want the beauty and completeness of the first four tracks to come back!  It isn’t that I want Deacon to be more “mainstream” with his songs, but give all of them the drive and ambition he gave to “Paddling Ghost” and “Snookered.”

Track 8: “Slow With Horns/Run For Your Life”

The opening of this song feels like it wouldn’t be out of place on a M83 album, which isn’t a bad thing.  It also brings back the live musicians from the first part of the album.  Very nice.

Track 9: “Baltihorse”

The best part of this track is the frantic glockenspiel playing.  Otherwise, another track that I don’t get on first listen and a song that stretches on a little too long.

Track 10: “Get Older”

A very danceable track closes out the album.  It has an almost triumphant feel to it, but maybe I just feel triumphant after listening to such a dense, difficult album in one sitting.  Yet, it is a good album closer and a victory lap type of track.

 

So, overall this album seems hit or miss after one listen.  Some tracks stood out, especially tracks 3, 4, and 8, but a lot of the album seemed to not stray very far from the sound landscape developed in Spiderman of the Rings.  While not something I would listen to every day, Bromst has some songs that will bring me back to Deacon's musical chemistry lab of sound.