Dan Mangan, Rural Alberta Advantage (Danforth Music Hall, Oct 25/12)

Dan Mangan

Kicking off with the new single from the Radicals EP surprised me slightly but I quickly came around to We Want To Be Pleasantly Surprised, Not Expectedly Let Down. It even descended into the disparate instruments jamming away before melding right back together straight into the other mouthful of a song title About As Helpful As You Can Be, Without Being Any Help at All, signalled by that telltale violin opening. Following Oh, Fortune's title track the first Nice, Nice track, Sold, was met with very enthusiastic crowd support. Next was an intro about the minuteness of human existence in history before Dan dropped Leaves, Trees, Forests with a mini interlude (well more of a pregnant pause). 

From the always impressive whistle showcase by 'Mr. Kenton Lowen on the drums' on If I am Dead they absolutely crashed right on into Post War Blues. What a fantastic song given a righteous live treatment as the keys and violin plucking fill it out beautifully. From this high, after which the band appeared momentarily physically exhausted, Dan almost had no choice but to give them leave and give us the wonderful solo rendition of Basket. The Dan Mangan Band returned for Starts with Them, Ends with Us that may as well have been titled "Starts with Them, Ends with Triumph" based on the feeling portrayed by the onstage band in its closing. They had no problem with classic Road Regrets, nor the quintessential Dan Mangan song Robots, that saw the author crowdsurfing as we belted out the refrain. Rows of Houses is an amazing song and the band did it justice, especially as Dan and Kenton had a standoff with Dan signalling all of "my hype man, K-dizzle"'s drum crashes.Mr. Mangan led us through Death and Dying before the final number, Jeopardy. Not only is this a well written song but it was cute that a group in the audience answered the majority of his questions (far enough away from me to be cute and not annoying) and then the band absolutely rocked out the ending of it. The crashing of this set was fantastic and essentially guaranteed an encore. 

Back out solo, Dan played The Indie Queens are Waiting before reintroducing the band. But not exactly everyone as in true rockstar form Kenton came running in just before the drumming in Tina's Glorious Comeback, smoke from his lit cigarette streaming behind his bottle of booze. It didn't affect the quality of the song however as they brought it down. In finale Dan obviously knew what he wanted to do.. Hauling a chair into the middle of the crowd he requested that as much as we love the internet we put down our phones and raise our voices instead. So from this lofty position he lead us in Postcards'.. So Much For Everyone. This may have been the best crowd participation I've ever seen for this song as 1500 voices joined Dan's in singing to the heavens. Gorgeous.

The Rural Alberta Advantage

The RAA have been at it a long while; working shows to gain fans. With the release of their first album Hometowns the fruits of their labours were reaped, gaining much critical adoration and blog praise. As they continued to slug it out, releasing their second album Departing (more of a continuation than a departure) their already won-over fans couldn't be overly disappointed but it seemed as if they had plateaued. Now a year or so following that release they continue their hardworking tour efforts, still as openers though, not headliners. That being said it was a massive hometown crowd who knew to arrive early for this rockin' folk trio. By this point most songs from the two albums are tried and true 'classics'. Lucky for the devoted fan there were a few new pieces to provide some variation, such as the new Love on the Rocks track. It was an upbeat acoustic number, ending, as so many RAA songs do, with everything falling away but Nils' voice and light acoustic strumming. The other new track (only played live on this tour, so third time ever), coming later in the set, had a wicked drum beat provided by Paul, and once again ended on a Nils acoustic note.

In a decently long 70 minute opening set there were a lot of solid moments (solo Nils' Littlest Hobo not included). These included the yelling on Frank, AB as Nils doesn't strum but pounds on the body of his acoustic guitar. Summertime was lovely as always, especially when Amy pipes up on the last few lines. A personal fave is Four Night Rider that always seems to hit its mark in the short time it is allotted. While the crowd wasn't outwardly excited they did get into the closing sequence of Deathbridge, North Star, the rocking Barnes' Yard and finally the well-known Stamp. Another very good performance in their long line of performances, though it would have been more rock and roll if Nils had smashed his guitar when it got unplugged seconds before the end of the set, instead of plugging it back in.