Performers from Elvis to David Bowie have understood that even the greatest music will always benefit from visual pizzazz. Thus, Dan Mangan and his musicians, Blacksmith, have become an all-bearded band. Bassist John Walsh has only gingerly adopted a sensibly trim growth, but trumpet player JP Carter sports a particularly triumphant creation, including a handlebar moustache.
Facial furniture isn’t the only thing that sets Vancouver’s Mangan apart from the crowded male singer-songwriter genre. He’s similarly decorated his songs, draping them with beautiful guitar waterfalls, jazz drumming, four-part harmonies and wild brass melees that sound like a trumpet player falling down a flight of stairs. The blazing Post War Blues begins with a drum solo, while guitarist Gordon Grdina wrings sounds from his instrument by assaulting it with a stick so violently you half expect a visit from Her Majesty’s constabulary.
It adds up to an absorbing, constantly shifting, jazzy pop sound that lies somewhere between Radiohead and Love and really should take him further than a half-full, if cheering, venue on a midweek night. A sort of younger Leonard Cohen, the 32-year-old frontman is a terrific wordsmith (rhyming “minions” with “the theatre of opinions”) whose songs darkly or wryly tackle subjects as diverse as the climate of fear in Guatemala to a hapless “comedy of errors” on the road in Texas.
Between offerings from his excellent new album Club Meds, Mangan drily explains that “we used to be called Dan Mangan, which I thought was a good name”. Then he accedes to a Twitter request for the rarely played Tina’s Glorious Comeback, which comically and no doubt autobiographically compares the fortunes of a struggling musician, trying to retain his soul and sanity, to the greats.
“We’re not Elvis any more, we’re not Frankie in his wild years,” he croons. But they are Dan Mangan + Blacksmith, and their sounds and beards deserve a wider audience.
• At Thekla, Bristol, on 28 April. Box office: 0871 310 0000. Then touring
