MUSIC JUSTICE: Dan Deacon Is Even Cooler Than You Already Thought He Was

Hey there, friends of the movement!

So this edition of MUSIC JUSTICE has absolutely nothing to do with Los Angeles. But it has a whole lot to do with FOOD JUSTICE, and other kinds of JUSTICE that we value here at the FJH. Who is this musical crusader of the movement, you ask? Well, he's none other than Dan Deacon, and he's come to rock your world.

Cooler than you.

Baltimore native Deacon first emerged onto the indie scene with his breakout 2007 LP Spiderman Of The Rings, which was as rollicking of a good time as its title suggests. Deacon's signature sound is an insane collection of pretty much every synthesized bleep and fizz you've ever heard at a very high BPM, all topped with chipmunk'd vocals about bears and ghosts and rivers of gold, but it's a lot better than that description sounds because he's conservatory trained and takes more cues from this guy than this guy. He's kind of like the Andrew W.K. of nerdy computer minimalism. He made a name for himself as a live act by performing on the floor with his massive rig of electronics teetering and blinking in front of him, and by leading his audience through gauntlets. His terrific 2009 album Bromst found him adding a number of acoustic instruments to the mix, including xylophones, horns, and this absolutely incredible device: a player piano controlled by a computer to play at speeds that can only be described as wicked fast. He and his thirteen-piece ensemble toured for Bromst in this vehicle, which he tricked out to run on vegetable oil solicited from fans in exchange for a home-cooked meal from the onboard kitchen. To record parts of his forthcoming album, America, he built an anechoic chamber. Yes. That thing. He built one. Oh, and he's also one of the guys behind this (NSFW) gem.

You're probably now asking, "Wait, so, how could this dude possibly get any cooler?" Well, in a recent interview with that one music blog that no one likes to admit they read for some reason, Deacon revealed a mass of brilliant opinions and predilections, which I'm just going to quote here because paraphrasing would be stupid:

"When a lot of Americans think about American culture, they sort of don't consider themselves American. There's a disassociation with the word. America is defined often by the military, by the government, by the corporations. To me, it's important to be a positive voice in it and be like, 'No, America is also this.' There's no underground scene like the American DIY. There's no aspect of it taken from other cultures. This is quintessentially American."

"People who are weird are being homogenized so that it's easier to sell s**t to them. It's disheartening, because I feel like a lot of people yearn to not be a part of a system."

"When people think about slavery, they think think about the 1850s. They should read Tomatoland, about modern-day tomato farming. It basically talks about how farming is slavery. People are increasingly starting to become aware of things-- like, who wove the fabric in this shirt? Who brought it across the ocean? Where did the wood [for the table] come from?"

"Even if you look at Springsteen's political songs, they're often recontextualized-- 'Born in the U.S.A.' sounds like patriotic rhetoric when it's the opposite."

"I grew up with bands like Beck and Sonic Youth and Nirvana-- it was cool to not care. But we live in a time period where you have to give a f**k. If we just allow the destruction of our lifestyles, our habits, our cultures, our movements, our environments, our relationships to other cultures-- it's going to be a time of dark ages."

 "I did a five-day trip from Seattle to New York in 2006, from December 23 to December 28. I didn't have an ID so I couldn't fly, and I didn't have a credit card. It was back when I was way off-the-grid. I knew I was gonna miss Christimas. I started thinking about the train-- a beautiful, antiquated, romantic way of traveling, over Christmas. It would be incredible. And it was."

On being pegged as "the fat, bald guy": "I can understand-- you read a review of music, and you usually hear about how they look. Men obviously have it much easier than women, but if you don't look like the standard male, you get it as well. It's a different type of objectification of sexuality."

"It's weird how people hate getting older. People love mountains, and mountains are old as f**k. They are the oldest things there are."

So, there you have it, folks. Dan Deacon is a champion of true American culture, weirdos, tomato pickers, the Boss, caring about things, going off the grid, train travel, positive body image, mountains, and getting older and wiser! In other words, everything FJH stands for! And though I can't say I understand how "Paddling ghost makes it/Coast to coast, makes it/Into the flames with the horse/Who made believe" has anything to do with the evils of Monsanto, Deacon claims that the rest of the lyrics on Bromst absolutely do!

To read the rest of the interview, in which Dan talks about his feelings about the apocalypse and his mother's death, go here. America is out August 28 on Domino, and if you pre-order the album, you get a 2x3 foot flag with a beautiful photo of Lake Placid on it, just like the one we have proudly waving in our front yard! You can then use the flag to win a variety of contests. All very exciting stuff.

Look at all that glory...

Here's the fantastically recursive video for "True Thrush," off the upcoming album:

-Gabriel Mathews