Baltimore man-child goes minimalist

This post is partly an excuse to write about my favourite gig of the year (and possibly of my life) but also a discussion of what happens when an artist you like starts taking their work to ’strange new places’.

Dan Deacon is famous for his live shows. He works with all his equipment on a table down on the floor amongst the crowd, with the house lights on for much of the set. He garnered much acclaim for his gigs in Whelan’s and Vicar St in December 2007 and June of this year and, with that in mind, I got Spiderman of the Rings (2007) and marked out the Baltimore man-child as one to see at Electric Picnic in August. He lived up to expectations.

In conversation with fellow media types in recent weeks, we inevitably get round to our best of 2008 lists. It comes to my turn and I say Dan Deacon at Electric Picnic was my gig of the year and people ask why. My response is a pitiful series of ooohs and aaahs and exclamatory swearing because that’s the only way I can get even close to describing that awesome hour of organised chaos in a tent.

With his whimsical, exhilarating electro-pop tunes, Deacon had the Little Big Tent jumping, swaying, moshing like a thousand 10-year-old kids in a bouncy castle.

From the riotous ‘The Crystal Cat’ to the joyful twee anthem-cum-crowd freakout ‘Wham City’, the set harnessed people’s energy and sense of humour and gave them back an amazing communal experience.

I think that communal experience was key to my enjoyment of it. Having belted my way over to the Little Big Tent straight after Elbow, I was trying to calm my expectations after Guy Garvey’s own fist-pumping finale ‘One Day Like This’. Deacon offered more of the same fist pumping but also a closeness and intensity that you won’t find at an Elbow gig.

He organised human whirlpools and tunnels that were supposed to suck everybody in eventually but didn’t quite work because of the tight space and intoxicated crowd. But for those of us who did get sucked in and danced our way “sassy as fuck” (as Deacon put it) down the tunnel of hands, there was a feeling of having had a crazy, sweaty, dangerous yet joyful shared experience. When the gig’s climax ‘Wham City’ finally faded out, I just stood there with my hands on my head, exclaiming ‘Holy fuck! Holy fuck!’ and then high-fived some equally ecstatic strangers.

I realise the moshing is not to everyone’s tastes and quite a few people left the tent after the first crowd surge at the start. Once or twice I had to grab the person in front to avoid falling over but, for me, the hint of danger added to the experience. Probably not a good way to get one’s kicks…

‘Silence Like the Wind Overtakes Me’ is a ridiculous yet sublime harmony that probably best distills the experience of a Dan Deacon gig. There’s a handful of videos of his Picnic set floating around Youtube. But this one from Pitchfork 2007 really captures the feeling.

Back to December 2008 and Deacon begins his new tour with a 15-member ensemble at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple. Playing material from his forthcoming Bromst album (March 2009), pre-publicity said to expect something different and, by all accounts, it was different. The NY Times review said the crowd didn’t know how to react:

That made some people impatient; they had come to dance and get silly, not to experience Minimalist meditations. When one piece lingered over sustained tones, the crowd started clapping a double-time dance beat.

It seems Deacon has gone minimalist, with much of the new material a homage to American composer Steve Reich (Deacon has a master’s degree in electro-acoustic composition). The set was half from his iPod down on the floor and half from the ensemble up on stage. Apparently the new songs were “mercurial, exhilarating structures with angular, leaping vocal lines from David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), cooing female vocal harmonies and pointillistic guitar patterns.”

However, there was some of the usual crowd participation: audience members placed hands on neighbours’ heads – a “healing ritual of sorts”. And Deacon’s humorous rants still feature. (After technical glitches: “Well, this so far is a nightmare. Let’s see if we can take over the nightmare, and have sex with the nightmare.”)

The sound quality is poor on the videos that have emerged so far but below is an example of what he’s up to.

I don’t want to make my mind up about Bromst until I hear it. But maybe we won’t be witnessing Deacon’s electro-pop tour de forces for a while. I was looking forward to another one but who’s to say his new, more minimalist set won’t be just as good, if a little more demanding.

Video by Dan Keezer.