Dan Mangan “Being Somewhere” interview▪

Dan Mangan says he’s in full promo mode. “You spend two and a half years making a record,” he says, “and now you have a daunting task of trying to find some ears for it and have the world actually pay attention and give it a listen.”

The record he’s been making is called Being Somewhere, and on it, Mangan arms the rebels in the crusade for tenderness. The album is a combative plea for mercy from a manic world and its effects on the psyche. Whittling his sharpest pen to date, Being Somewhere is marked by Mangan’s singular wit and respectful deference to the quagmire of existence.

“I wanted this album to feel like the inside crook of a familiar elbow on the nape of your neck, a comforting embrace,” says Mangan, “These songs are tenderhearted and unfurl like an overdue conversation with a dear friend. They essentially lay out where we’re at, how I’m doing, and how I think I can help.”

Being Somewhere is his sixth studio album. It cuts incisively but never forgets its underlying thesis: It’s cool to care.

“I feel like I’ve never made the same record twice,” Mangan says. “You know, at this point, it seems like the usual thing is to do something unusual, you know? That might partly be just sort of like, I get bored of doing the same thing, and I want to try something new, but also just the shifting of the sand. I mean, this album was special in that it was made long distance. Drew Brown, the producer, was in Chicago, and it’s the kind of manifestation that took that long because of the limitations, you know, we just couldn’t be in a room together. And so it’s unique, and it definitely has his stamp on it. Sonically Drew is ruthless in allegiance to his gut, and if his gut is telling him something about a song, he follows that intuition to the nth degree. So at any given time, he might throw out everything that we’ve done on a song and start over because he heard some sound that he thought was the new direction or something like that and base the whole song around that one thing or whatever. And so, working with him, I sort of was along for the ride, you know, and it’s great because this record has what I love in most of my favourite records, which is that thing where it feels like it’s modern and yet feels like it could have been made 20 years ago. So I think that’s a special quality. I’m very, very proud of it, actually. I think it’s my best work that I’ve ever done.”

571 emails. 100+ hours on the phone and thousands of text messages. A mere three days spent in-person together over two and a half years of long-distance work. Such a displaced recording process might make anyone question the concept of being anywhere at all, let alone being somewhere else.

This is how Dan Mangan and collaborator/producer Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck) manifested Being Somewhere. All components were recorded in isolation and beamed up to the mothership. No piece of the puzzle ended up as expected, and each moment is the fruition of separate yet conjoined rabbit holes.

“I think when you’re recording and producing one of your best tools, your best assets is perspective. And when you’re working in a vacuum or when you’re working in a small amount of time, you just don’t have much perspective. So, you know, there was a lot about this process that was extremely painful and how long it took and how frustrating that was, but one of the benefits definitely was that we were constantly given the gift of perspective to, you know, something that two weeks ago we thought was incredible, now we look back, we’re like, actually, no, that’s not the thing. Sometimes Drew would send me something, and I’d take a listen, and I’d be like, Oh God, this is not what I had in mind; you know, I’m not sure about this. And he would say, listen to it like 20 times over the next 48 hours, and then let me know what you think. So I listened to it over and over again over the next couple days, and then I’d call him back, and I’d be like, You’re a fucking genius. This is the best thing ever.”

One song on the record is dedicated to the late Scott Hutchison of the band Frightened Rabbit. Scott’s untimely death in 2018 affected Mangan more than he expected.

“I’d known of them, and I met them in Glastonbury in 2012. We had many mutual friends, you know, most of the Broken Social Scene folks and Wintersleep; both bands had done a bunch of touring with them. And it’s interesting because, you know, I was familiar with their music. I loved the song, The Woodpile, and I knew a bunch about their other songs, but I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of that band. So since dedicating the song to him, people will often give me trinkets or Frightened Rabbit-related things and I feel unworthy of them. But I knew that song, The Woodpile, and when Scott died, I couldn’t believe how affected I felt. I was a mess for like a week. I remember trying to pour milk into my boy’s cereal, and just like tears streaming down my face. It’s hard to say exactly why it unlocked something in me or broke something in me. He was about my age, you know, I considered him a peer of sorts. And Robin Williams had died shortly there before, and you know, this sort of character flaw where this person can create so much joy for others and yet can’t feel it themselves is just so deeply sad. You know, the loneliness of that, that he was always communicating.

And that was the feeling in The Woodpile, you know, “come back to my corner? Spent too long alone tonight.” I always resonated with that, you know, the feeling of being at a party and sort of sinking into the corner and not really feeling like you’re part of the party and feeling alone in a sea of people. And so shortly after he died, that song came together so quickly, maybe even that day. I was having a shower, had to take the kids to school or whatever. And you know, “crying in the shower, crying in the car, crying in the office towers.” And because of the hunt for him, you know, he disappeared a couple days before he died, and the band was tweeting about it, and they were sending out social media, you know, really worried about Scott, if you see Scott, please call the police or call someone or call us or let us know if where he is. And there’s a sort of like mad search going on around the UK for Scott. And then, before he died, he sent those two tweets. One saying, you know, be good to the people you love. I wish I could have done it, you know, I wish I could have been better at it. And then his very last one, which is so fittingly poetic; “I’m away now. Thanks.”

Under the care of Drew Brown’s distinct touch, Being Somewhere forges sonics well beyond the tropes of modern folk music. Helming the project from Chicago, Brown sourced musical contributions from all over North America, the UK and Japan, including work from Joey Waronker (Beck, Atoms for Peace), Jason Falkner (Beck, St. Vincent), Thomas Bartlett (The National, Taylor Swift), Dave Okumu (Arlo Parks, Adele), Mary Lattimore (Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten), and Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew.

Watch the full interview below: