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Review: 'MANGAN, DAN'
'More Or Less'   

-  Label: 'City Slang'
-  Genre: 'Pop' -  Release Date: '2nd November 2018'

Our Rating:
This is a soothing album yet, paradoxically, it's full of dystopic worries of a man whose view of the world has shifted since becoming a father for the first time.

The lyrics of the Vancouver-based artist's fifth album centre on domestic concerns rather than global issues and they portray a man aware of how easy it is to drift into a comfortably numb routine.

Mangan sings of keeping up appearances and following the social graces but also of fears that things may be getting a little too cosy and settled for comfort. A sense of weariness is apparent in ostensibly genial songs like Just Fear ("every road feels travelled") and Lay Low ("tired of the same old").

Suggesting a state of mild confusion bordering on blind panic, he says "I wrote about warmth. I wrote about the feeling of building something when I was young, and the fear of losing it as an adult. I wrote about feeling overwhelmed. I wrote about the power of what goes unsaid."

If all this sounds a bit heavy, then rest assured that there's nothing here that a listener will find unduly jarring or difficult. Perhaps this is also a weakness; uncertainty and fear shouldn't really be so polished as this.

Dan Mangan's website

  author: Martin Raybould

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MANGAN, DAN - More Or Less