Friday, November 13, 2009

Noughties By Nature #49: Dan Deacon - Snookered

There's a Marmite quality to all the best bands - they may inspire adoration or revulsion but the key thing is that they don't elicit a half-arsed shrug. Many of my peers loathe Dan Deacon, and even as a raging fanboy it's not difficult to see why - he's kinda irritating, unsubtle and relentless full-on, like Animal Collective on a sugar high. But I've been entirely enamoured with this song since the first I heard it - it's the clear victor of my Last.Fm “Most Listened” list by a factor of almost 4:1, and that doesn't even register the hundreds of plays I haven't scrobbled. The ultimate distillation of everything good about Deacon's previous work, it doesn't contain a single element the oversized Baltimorean hasn't used before, but the entirety's executed so utterly perfectly that I'm frankly left in awe. From the solemnly glacial glockenspiel intro, it slowly swells into a multi-layered symphony of throbbing synths, propulsive drum beats and distorted children's choirs that may at times sound like a Gameboy having a seizure but nonetheless maintains a certain beautiful melancholy throughout.
Adam Elmahdi

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[Album: Bromst]

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