Pleb Pool

                 

                 

Last Thursday I saw Dan Deacon.

I think unlike Deerhoof I should give a little introduction on the man. I assume most people who read this have no idea who these bands are and I always find applying adjectives to describe styles of music clumsy. Having said that, I think this song and it’s accompanying video is a good indication of what he’s about. Introduction over. Onto the concert.

Throughout the mires of the internet I heard cried out in unison that this Dan Deacon would deliver a consensual fucking to your mind. Intrigued greatly I chose this over an equally tempting evening with Beirut. Whether or not one beat out the other is obviously a silly debate so we’ll skip the foreplay and get into it.

Ecstasy was delivered in spades. Not of the sort I was expecting.

Listen to his music and see the photos and you can tell that on purely sensory level it was amazing. But Dan’s trick is audience participation. What could merely be a synthesizer led dance frenzy then turns into something akin to a spiritual mass. Dan holds his audience like a pastor. “Point for the sky as if you’re hailing the gods who built this ceiling”, he preaches. There’s a dance-off. A New New Year’s countdown. A human whirlpool. In one quiet interlude as soft piano notes stab the silence, he asks everyone to get together and touch each other’s heads whilst “Thinking of your most loved one, as he or she smiles back”. There’s a genuine feel of communal happiness in the air.

And yet the music doesn’t take a back seat. I find that gigs that carry such spectacle often fall into something more akin to pure entertainment than anything related to musicianship; a complaint I feel has been levelled at the extravaganza that is a Flaming Lips show. Not so for Dan’s show. The music is there orchestrating the movements and emotions the entire way. One cannot exist without the other.

I think before my words start breaking the pretentiousness dam I’ll break it off here. I’ll conclude by saying that if you ever need to put a smile on your forlorn, disillusioned with humanity face and Dan happens to be passing through town you’d do well by yourself to attend.