Dan Deacon – True Thrush

Dan Deacon is a self confessed ‘nerd’, but gone are the days when the use of this term with derogatory implications has any traction. In fact it’s probably fair to say the label has taken a 180 degree turn. Nerds are now our celebrated tastemakers, just ask Mark Zuckerberg. Hell even thick rimmed glasses, a once stereotypically key component of the nerd uniform have become the ultimate fashion accessary.

Deacon’s nerd credentials are legit. Well schooled as a graduate in electro-acoustic and computer music composition, a breakthrough album unashamedly titled Spiderman of the Rings and a pair of spectacles that’d look at home on Rick Moranis in ‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’. His high energy, participation compulsory live shows convert too cool for school, arms folded hipsters into giddy, eager to please children whose self consciousness has yet to develop and corrupt their ability to let it all hang out.

August 27 sees the release of America his first album for Domino Records and the initial taste of it comes to us via single True Thrush. It’s both immediately identifiable as a Deacon track and brimming with fresh ideas. Dense layers of hyperactive noises that crank along like the mechanisms of a souped up cuckoo clock in magnified detail, somehow working together to create a well oiled device. His ability to present these inhuman sounds in such a euphorically warm piece of music is stunning. It’s more eccentric samples that might come off as grating on their own become charming idiosyncrasies in conjunction with the lush harmonies here that every fan will be dying to lend their own voice to in the communal setting of his live gigs.

Deacon comes off as a nutty professor type whose off the wall experimentation has lead him to a discovering a very special formula. You get the feeling he could play conductor to a symphony of wind up toys and make it sound like a joyous celebration. The genius is the method behind the madness.