#576 Dan Deacon - America

For years Dan Deacon was just a weirdo ripper, making music that people loved because it was so wildly, unabashedly insane, tons of fun, noisy, unpredictable and brash. It was, at least on the surface, mostly about the kinds of sounds and the attitude behind them.

It turns out that Deacon has ambitions for more than that though, ambitions to be taken seriously as a Serious songwriter. There were hints in the still-batshit Spiderman of the Rings, but the full on stab at artfulness came in 2009's hyperdense masterpiece Bromst, which invovled epic constructions meant to blow your mind through outright architecture rather than just some odd angles. Invented instruments, layers of sounds, and piles of unplayable melodies conspired in an apparent effort to make the busiest album ever, that, at its best, coalesced into a cohesive, crushing monolith.

America is the final step on that journey. The jokey names, squirrely vocals, and hyperactive hypermelodies are mostly gone, instead finding songs that sound purposeful. This isn't Dan Deacon playing around, this is a Statement.

Deacon used to play in all caps, now he just capitalizes the first letters of his words, like an adult.

This isn't hyper pop any more, this is possibly modern classical music, played with bent electronics.

That doesn't mean its boring: this is still wildly inventive, and full of legitimately unheard sounds and textures and approaches. Heck, Lots is about as outright rock as Deacon has gotten, evoking punk in intuitive ways that can't be convincingly justified in tangible terms. But you have to adjust your expectations.

How does this work once we've decided to take it as highly composed statement music? Pretty well? A lot of what we've head here we've heard on Bromst, and so that rush of the new that Deacon spoiled us with has worn off. The finest moments are the fast-paced first few tracks and scattered moments throughout the 4-part suite that makes up the album's second side (further evidence of evolution: do you think Spiderman-era Dan Deacon would have put out a 4-part song without winking?). The buzzy nuanced strings on the opener work, and the final track which uses some of Crystal Cat's best tricks to rival its standing as Deacon's emotional-impact high water mark.

On some level the album suffers from its restraint: it's not as shamelessly huge as Bromst, and nowhere near as fun as the earlier stuff. But I suspect that it has finer details to get lost in, and that what it lacks in bold slashes is makes up for in feathered brushstrokes and fine details. The fact that the paint is still neon is a distraction, and I suspect there's a lot to be mined with closer and closer and closer looks. Provisionally, for an album that decidedly needs a second look, and almost certainly eventually either deserves higher or lower, let's say 4/5