Album Review- Dan Mangan- Natural Light

If you lived in rural America when I grew up, you might have got your television through satellite not cable. If you got your television from satellite then you might have spent your time watching MuchMusic, the Canadian alternative to MTV like I did. I remain amazed that there were so many good Canadian bands that never crossed over to the US. 

As cool as MTV was in the early 90s, the low budget Much was so much cooler. Yes many of those bands found at least some chart success in the US - Tragically Hip, The Pursuit of Happiness and Barenaked Ladies to name a few. Looking far and wide for albums by Canadian bands that had negligible presence in the US like Blue Rodeo and The Grapes of Wrath were big for me. 

If you can’t tell, I’m very nostalgic for that time but it ended as I entered adulthood and also as Much eventually transitioned in the late 90s/early 00s to Fuse. If you watched Fuse, it seemed like they wanted to compete with MTV, not be what they once were. As much as I wanted to hold on to that dream channel of youth, it had gone. For a brief time in the early 2000s, I had some correspondence with an interesting Canadian woman, which included trading discs. Once again, I was getting exposure to great bands that would otherwise not be on in my radar. 

Somewhere in the mid 2010s or so, I got (at least some access to the satellite radio) Sirius XM. I quickly found channels that specialized in some underappreciated genres- underground garage, outlaw county and college rock. I don’t know if someone hadn't told me- that the Verge existed- a Canadian alt rock channel hidden between the Jazz and Classical. It also led to jokes between me and my friends how “Canadian” is listed as a genre like it was Reggae or Heavy Metal. So it’s the like old days. Here’s those old Cancon (Canadian content) rules pushing artists that haven’t broken ground in the US, but come from a deep well of music to pull from. 

Among a list of songs that could be hit radio singles in an alternate universe is Dan Mangan’s 2009 single “Robots”. Catchy, quirky, sad- that alternate universe is Canadian alternative rock. It made me a fan and I have watched to see what he has done. 

His most recent work is 2020s Thief- an album of all covers of some obvious influences (REM, Neutral Milk Hotel, Elliott Smith) and some less obvious (Lauryn Hill, Bob Marley). I didn’t take to 2022s Being Somewhere - an album cowritten and produced by OneRepublic guitarist Drew Brown. 2025s Natural Light was recorded in six days- a workshop in preparation for a new album that became that album. Brown isn’t here, as Mangan is backed by his touring band consisting of Jason Haberman and Mike Brien, producers, multi instrumentalists and members of Canadian indie band Zeus and Don Kerr who has been in Rheostatics, Communism and made an album with Ron Sexsmith. It didn’t receive much attention outside of Canadian press outlets. 

User based websites have given it mixed reviews but the few press reviews are quite positive. I agree. While a critic went with the “sad bastard music” label, it’s a downer of a record in a good way (one critic used “Astral Weeks” as a touch point). Mangan is in the vein of that Bon Iver or Fleet Foxes indie folk sound. There’s no killer single a la Robots but it feels like a consistent bunch of songs that hangs together beginning to end. 

Which is a good thing. Mangan has constructed the kind of album you would hope that he could and this under-the-radar gem that would be an otherwise AOTY candidate if it was marketed differently. Plus. As others have mentioned, he’s still only 42 despite 20 years of recording music. An old soul in a young man’s body.