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DEREK BRANSCOMBE Enlarge Image

Dan Mangan (second to left) and his band.

In the summer of 2009, a baby-faced Vancouver singer/songwriter by the name of Dan Mangan quickly became one of Canada’s most buzzed-about indie acts on the strength of his widely acclaimed sophomore album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice. Mangan was named artist of the year at XM’s Verge Music Awards that September, and Nice, Nice, Very Nice went on to be shortlisted for the 2010 Polaris Music Prize alongside releases by Caribou, Broken Social Scene and The Sadies. 
   
When Uptown spoke to Mangan for an October 2009 cover story, he was excited and overwhelmed by the attention, and more than a little wary of the bright spotlight he was suddenly under. "I’m in the heat of this record cycle and I’m all too aware that this exposure will subside," he said at the time. "I’m trying not to get too used to it. The easiest thing to do would be to get comfortable."
   
Mangan, now 28, didn’t get comfortable. Instead, he decided to push himself well out of his comfort zone — and Oh Fortune, his beautifully realized third album, is a goosebump-raising testament to that fact. Released at the end of September via Arts & Crafts, Oh Fortune showcases a darker side of Mangan. Gone are the cheery horns, handclaps and hook-heavy songs about lovelorn robots, replaced by lush, textured sonics that perfectly compliment Mangan’s gravel-road timbre and ink-black ruminations on life, death and what it all means.
   
In other words, Oh Fortune is a departure — and a big one, at that.
   
"It was important for me to challenge myself," he says over the phone from St. John’s, Nfld. "I felt like we stumbled upon something people responded to with the last album. For this album, I was in a different place."
   
Yes, Mangan is a couple years older and a little more road-hardened these days. In two years, he’s gone from being the earnest, rosy-cheeked guy with an acoustic guitar to the cerebral singer/songwriter who’s more than capable of penning challenging, ambitious alt-folk anthems.
   
"It seems to me that every record you release should be a career-defining record," Mangan says. "We spent four or five months on this record. I wanted it to stand as a 45-minute piece of music. I’m a big lover of albums for albums’ sake. It might not grab people as immediately, but I hope it’s a deeper, longer-lasting album for people."
   
Indeed, Oh Fortune is the kind of album you can really chew on. While more than a few songs deal explicitly with death (see: If I Am Dead, Regarding Death and Dying), others offer hope and reassurance. It’s a heavy album, but it never sags under its own weight.
   
"Some of (the songs) were actually written a long time ago," Mangan says. "They needed more time to digest and figure themselves out. The lyrical content is perhaps darker — but I’ve come to realize that dark isn’t bad. Coming to terms with darker things has helped me appreciate the lighter things. I think it’s important to ask a lot of questions. The world is such a chaotic place and I’m not going to understand it all. Letting go was kind of the goal here.
   
"After listening to it a few times, I’m hoping people hear the hope or victory underneath," he adds. "It’s about letting go of all that chaos. It’s good to think intensely about a lot of things, but it comes back to appreciating what you have."
   
Oh Fortune is as ambitious sonically as it is lyrically. Helmed by noted producer Colin Stewart (Black Mountain, Ladyhawk and many more), the record has a distinct Pacific Northwest grit about it that evokes the chill of post-rain air and the warmth of a well-worn flannel shirt, depending on the song. Hazy, heady soundscapes recall faded Polaroids and fuzzy nostalgia; in fact, as I mentioned in my review of the album, many of the songs here remind me of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and the titular Washington logging town in which that TV series was set.
   
Mangan laughs when I suggest that last part to him. "There’s a guitar tone on Starts With Them, Ends With Us that really reminds me of Twin Peaks," he says. "We actually called it the Twin Peaks Guitar Tone."
   
After spending months immersed in it, Mangan says he had to walk away from Oh Fortune for a while. "But as we prepared for the album’s release and I started talking to journalists again, I gained a new appreciation of it," he says. "It’s the thing I’ve put the most love and sweat and passion and blood and tears into. I’m the most proud of this project."
   
It’s also a project about which Mangan feels most confident.
   
"I feel like I need less external validation this time," he says. "Before, I felt a bit like a puppy — ‘Do you like it? Do you like it?’ Now I’m more sturdy with it."
   
Making Oh Fortune proved to be a freeing experience for Mangan, too. While following up a successful second album can be a source of very real pressure, Mangan saw it as an door-opening opportunity.
   
"I was excited to move on," he says. "(Nice, Nice, Very Nice) changed a lot of things for me and I’m very proud of it as well, but I was ready to go. I had a lot of material backed up that made its way onto this album. Now I have a more empty coffer, which is scary but also exciting."
   
After all, every new album is another chance to smash people’s expectations.
   
"I think Oh Fortune has established that this band isn’t what people had assumed," Mangan says. "From here, I think we can go anywhere."
 

DAN MANGAN
Nov. 1, 7 p.m., Garrick Centre