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Everything Is Fucked, But Dan Mangan Loves You
After years of reinvention and self-reflection, the Vancouver indie-folk mainstay returns with Natural Light—his most fluid and grounded album to date.
by Izzy Kaz
Photos by Izzy Kaz
- Published on
“Hey! Nice to see you. Did you get a haircut?” Dan Mangan calls out to the barista at Turks Coffee on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. I can’t help but smile—Mangan is clearly as beloved at his local coffee shop as he is in the indie-folk world that he’s grown up in.
It’s one of the first sunny days of spring, and the brightness suits Mangan’s mood. We’ve just spent half an hour strolling through his neighbourhood, chatting and snapping photos among the blooming front yards. With soft blue eyes that match his button-down shirt, Mangan is warm and unhurried, pausing to pet both a cat and a dog along the way.
These days, ahead of the release of his seventh studio album Natural Light, Dan Mangan is basking in creative fulfillment and a deep sense of gratitude.
“Jason, my bass player, and his wife had bought this little rustic, awesome cottage,” Mangan recalls, gazing out the window of Turks. “He was like, ‘Well, we should just go hang at the cabin.’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah, sounds amazing.’ And we all have kids. We all have families. The idea of any kind of getaway is quite self indulgent.” The group intentionally packed microphones and gear, thinking they “might” demo something or write some songs “or whatever.” The goal, though, was never more than to relax. “We just sort of wanted to go and swim and play music.”
While messing around with their instruments, Mangan offered up a song he had been sitting on, and from there, the group’s humble intentions blossomed into creating more and more. “It was like, ‘Oh, let’s just try another one.’ And so the first day, we recorded one. The second day, we recorded two. The third day, we recorded three. The fourth day, we recorded four songs.” By the end of the weekend, the band had an album’s worth of songs recorded. “And I think because of that, we manifested this thing that happened. We have years of recording experience between us.” Mangan flips between revelling in the pure joy of bringing his new album to life with ease, and analyzing the mechanics of how it came to be. He continues, “But it felt cosmic. It just felt like divine intervention of some kind.”
“It’s funny—I’ve been rambling on about how great I think this record is,” Mangan says, taking a sip of his decaf drip coffee. “I think the reason I can justify that to myself is because, emotionally, it was a spiritual experience. It was so creative, so fluid, so freeing. I’m just so grateful.”
We pause as another familiar face walks in and starts chatting with Mangan. “How’s it going?” Mangan says to his friend. “This is Gord,” he adds, introducing us. “I’m doing an interview right now,” he shares. I shake hands with Gord Grdina, an incredible local guitar and oud player. “He played in my band for eight years,” says Mangan. It’s a lovely glimpse into the tight-knit local music scene—and a reminder of how deeply rooted Mangan is in it.
Prior to the band’s fortuitous getaway to the cabin last spring, Mangan had gone to see Bells Larsen open for Land of Talk at the Wise Hall in East Vancouver. “I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna go into the woods with the band, and then later this month, this summer, I’m gonna go down to LA, but I think I’m gonna start working on a record soon.’” Larsen gave him a thought exercise: describe the intention for the new project in three words. Mangan replied with contained, “because my previous records have been very exploratory and recorded long distance. I wanted something that happened in one room.” Next came free, “because no matter what, I wanted to be creatively free.” The final word was direct, because “I didn’t want anything [musically] to obscure the songs.”
The introspective musician carried those three words—contained, free, and direct—close to his heart through every stage of making Natural Light. Listening to him reflect on the process, with his thoughtful tangents and careful articulation, I can’t help but picture him in another life: a well-loved professor, or maybe the kind of friend’s dad you end up having a long, meandering, beer-fuelled chat with on a porch somewhere. There’s a grounded warmth to his presence, and a humble awe in how easily this record seemed to come together.
Natural Light is a beautiful, subtly layered album—each song worked over just enough, never overwrought. It’s the kind of record made for evening walks in late-summer sun, full of gentle introspection and quiet, difficult questions. Mangan invites listeners into those conversations, even as the world feels like it’s unraveling.
“I think that is the underlying message,” he tells me. “Everything is fucked, but I love you. You know? That’s the thesis of this record. Everything is fucked up, but it doesn’t mean you hate everyone because of it. That’s where the compassion comes in right now.”
It’s a sentiment echoed in tracks like “Cut the Brakes” and “Melody,” where Mangan wrestles with the existential and the personal in equal measure—searching for control, for purpose, for music that still wants him back. “I’ve had two careers,” he says. “I had one, and then I put my head in the sand, had kids, and focused on that. And when my kids were no longer babies, I was like, ‘Okay, time to get back at it.’ And I realized, I had to earn it again.
“Surviving your thirties as a band is a miracle,” he adds. And in Mangan’s case, surviving them with your creativity, humility, and sense of wonder intact? That’s the real triumph.
Natural Light is out May 16 via Arts & Crafts.
Fall tour dates, featuring Bells Larsen as the opening act can be found at danmanganmusic.com
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