Dan is still the man. I've enjoyed his somehow alien, and somehow still comforting exploration of minimalist electronic orchestrations for as far back as I care to remember. My interest in his work has waned in recent years, but I've never given up on him. And now I'm glad that I kept the little rascal in my back pocket for all these years, because he's really done something that I want to share with the rest of you.
Mystic Familiar is Dan's first album since 2015's
Glass Riffer and represents his tightest collection of songs since at least
Bromst. The layered effects enriched vocals, rapidly oscillating Fisher-Price beats, enthusiastic builds, mellow breakdowns, and playfully existential lyrics are all present, accounted for, and spruced up for prime time. It feels like your favorite episode of A
dventure Time that somehow turns into a crossover with
Garfield and Friends, that also goes back in time, fixes your parent's relationship, and saves them from divorce. Your 'rents are then so elated that they buy you a puppy and let you eat ice cream for dinner the rest of the week. In sum, the adult version of me found it very validating, and my inner child even more so. If I had one complaint, it's that Dan, at times, can slip into lessor versions of artists who he is (in my very humble opinion) significantly more talented than. I really don't need, or want, to hear a low-rent rendition of Animal Collective when I'm not even a fan of the original, up-scale model! However, these instances of unfortunate mimicry are not representative of the
Mystic Familiar as a whole, and constituent only the briefest segments of the album. The intimate, massaging cascades of opener "Become a Mountain," the resonate, momentous ripple of "Fell Into the Ocean," and clean, urgent whirl of "Weeping Birch" really show Dan off at his best, and are enough to convince me that when I make my first million dollars as a blogger, I need to personally mail a copy of this record to everyone in America, along with a coloring book and a decoder ring. The last two items aren't strictly necessary, but I figure they couldn't hurt either.
Grab a copy from Domino Records,
here.
