Dan Deacon reconciles the grit and grandeur of the United States on America.
Long before electronic wizard Dan Deacon released his commercial debut, 2007’s Spiderman Of The Rings, he’d gigged with a high-school ska band, earned a computer-music-composition degree from SUNY at Purchase, blew tuba for Langhorne Slim, shredded improv grindcore guitar with Rated R, started a chamber ensemble, co-founded Baltimore’s Wham City arts/music collective and released a series of experimental computer-music/sine-wave recordings. Most people find that breadth of experience jaw-dropping, but Deacon explains it casually.
“The ska/grindcore/Langhorne Slim stuff was the seeds of me entering the musical world,” he says. “Ska instilled in me that it was OK to have fun making music. I grew up on Long Island, where hardcore and punk reigned supreme, and it was serious and macho, and ska was not that.”
Deacon continues to pursue an eclectic musical course—his Carnegie Hall debut in March was part of a John Cage tribute—but his greatest successes have been in the electronic/dance scene. America (Domino), Deacon’s new album and the follow-up to 2009’s highly regarded Bromst, could cement his status as one of the country’s most adventurous and inspired electronic architects.
“Obviously, the music is polarizing,” says Deacon. “This isn’t the most mainstream-focused music you can find today, so naturally it’s going to resonate with people differently. I didn’t want to repeat Bromst. I liked working with those long-form pieces, but I wanted to write pop songs again. I wanted them to be cohesive, but I didn’t want them to sound like the same instruments. That’s what’s most fun about electronic music; every song can exist in its own timbrel universe and be drastically different.”
Since Bromst, Deacon has toured relentlessly and created what he characterizes as “non-pop music stuff,” namely pieces for orchestras and ensembles, and his film score for Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt. His classical scope may have impacted America’s epic moments, given that he typically overlaps projects rather than concentrating on them individually.
“I find that I should do that, but I don’t,” he says, laughing. “In my head, I’m like, ‘I’ll set aside these two months … ,’ and of course that’s not reality. I love the opportunities, and I have a hard time not being an opportunist. I think the record has the widest array of sounds I’ve made. Even though it’s all over the place, it has a nice cohesive mix of acoustic sounds mixed with synthetic sounds. You can hear the progression from Spiderman to Bromst to America very clearly. It doesn’t sound like you’d put it on and go, ‘This is Dan Deacon?’ I think you’ll hear the maturity and evolution of the sound.”
Deacon’s reliance on actual lyrics and the human voice on America is a new wrinkle for him (Deacon’s vocal resemblance to Brian Eno has not gone unnoticed), but so too are the sociopolitical themes—inspired by the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement—as translated in the album’s thrillingly bombastic arrangements, broadly ranged sonic texture and even the title itself.
“The main idea of America was geography, and having a positive theme,” says Deacon. “But my lyrics have always been phonetic sounds or dark—conspiracies, corporate takeover, confusion, doubt, guilt—and I wanted to have that dichotomy, where the music is uplifting and majestic, but I didn’t want the lyrics to be the same or it would turn into candy. I wanted it to be sweet, but there needed to be a savory and bitter nature to the taste. It couldn’t be a sugary overdose. I realized more and more I wanted to call the record America because it had both of those things. I like American culture; the American DIY is the most beautiful thing, and I feel thankful to be a part of it. But I also hate American culture when you think about Walmart or the insane love of the military-industrial complex or the amount of racism and slavery that exists. There seemed to be no better title for that dichotomy.”
—Brian Baker
“Lots” (download):
