SOUND BITES

  In the nearly twenty years that Dan Mangan has been recording, his music has frequently undergone subtle transitions, while remaining consistently earnest; the acoustic folk of his early years peaked with his 2009 breakthrough Nice, Nice, Very Nice before his  sound opened up to additional orchestration and instrumentation on 2011's Oh Fortune . Club Meds , credited to Mangan and Blacksmith, followed four years later as a full blooded indie rock album that heralded some of the sonic experimentation that would carry over to 2018's More or Less ; that album played out like a culmination of sorts, a sum of all the parts picked up along the way and a masterful record that cemented Mangan's place as one of Canada's premier singer/songwriters and paved the way for an exciting future. Of course, we all know how the pandemic got in the way of everyone's plans; for Mangan, the by-product of Covid was having to craft his follow-up album via remote contact with co-writer/pr...

Dan Mangan's fifth album draws influence from a wide variety of sources, but perhaps none more so than family life. The father of two strips some of his arrangements back on More or Less , leaving many songs to stand on a bare frame; at times, the results feel a little slight (as in the very hushed but otherwise fine Lay Low ), but more often than not this approach allows for direct, honest and starkly charming songs. "Simple and effective" isn't the entire name of the game (although sparsely arranged tracks like Just Fear and Which Is It are very, very effective); by times, more sound creeps into the proceedings, calling to mind Radiohead at their turn-of-the-century electro-renegade best ( Peaks & Valleys , Can't Not and Never Quiet wear this particular influence most plainly). Perhaps the album's most thrilling section, however, is its midpoint; Cold in the Summer rides an easy groove and a bright melody down Father John Misty Avenue, while Tr...