The follow up to 2011’s highly acclaimed, award winning ‘Oh Fortune’ sees the Vancouver-based artist Dan Mangan return after a few years out of the limelight, this time officially joining forces with his long-time -now integral- band members to play under the moniker Dan Mangan + Blacksmith.
The name Blacksmith alludes to a craft that takes years to master and marks the start of a new era in Dan Mangan’s work, where the band play a larger role than ever before and the result is their heaviest, most intricate and most fearless work to date.
“I used to be emotionally crippled at times by the need for others to enjoy my work” Mangan says, explaining the palpable sense of freedom in the recordings this time round. “I trust my gut more now, and end up happier with the product.”
The album title, ‘Club Meds’, is a pun on one of the driving lyrical motions of the record; the idea that we’re all on vacation from having to be honest with ourselves – that sometimes it’s easier to medicate than deal with reality.
“Club Meds is about sedation” Mangan writes in the record’s liner notes. “Sedation can be chemical, but not exclusively so. There is a great vacation from actuality going on. Maybe there always has been. It seems like everybody else is already at the party and that life is somehow easier or more fun under the fog.”
The new album is due out on the 12th January next year and you can stream the new single 'Vessels' in the player below.