Dan Deacon’s ultra-high-energy electro-punk records are advertisements for his even-more-ultra-high energy concerts. Partly, this is true for the same reasons it’s true for every musician these days – selling recorded audio just isn’t a way to make money anymore. Deacon even includes links labelled “Steal” next to discography entries on his homepage, sending visitors directly to a Piratebay search for his name.
But mainly, it’s the pure ecstasy of the live Deacon experience that makes his recordings a little less than definitive. Back when he first really broke on the scene with 2007’s Spiderman of the Rings, Deacon would set up his gear on the floor rather than the stage of the various dive bars he swung through, and guided his deliriously boozy hipster crowd through some mix of calisthenics and team-building exercises. And let’s not forget the iconic neon green skull pulsating in time to the maniacal jams — a Dan Deacon show is a sweaty, strobe-ey, psychedelic mess of a great time.
You won't get that listening to Deacon on headphones in your bedroom. Gliss Riffer, like his previous albums, becomes something more sublime and separate, a contemplation of life’s beautiful velocity, a widescreen epic backed by lifted Afrobeat drums layered with distorted synths. Album lead-off track and first single “Feel the Lightning” has it all: anthemic choruses over pulsing drums, beautifully buried robotized vocals, and layer upon layer of polyrhythmic texture that builds and builds toward … what, exactly? While it feels almost mean to criticize a teddy bear like Dan Deacon, his uniquely gritty joy and perfect sense of texture, pace and even melody have let him get away with being a pretty uninteresting songwriter. A Dan Deacon track is a loop that adds, subtracts, and fades out, but there’s rarely anything unpredictable or arresting. That’s fine in its own way – you wouldn’t call out Phillip Glass for being a boring songwriter, and Deacon has a lot in common with Glass.
It does make you pine for lost opportunity, however. Both artistically and from a career standpoint, Deacon needs to explore something different. Gliss Riffer is good fun, but it’s hard to say if it sounds fundamentally different from the records he put out nearly a decade ago.
The only Gliss Riffer track othat really points in a new direction is “When I Was Done Dying,” which, from its minimal, angular melody to its warbling vocal is a melding of EDM with old-timey country blues and string bands — and it actually works. It has the mix of longing and beauty that defines Dan Deacon, but leaves a little space below the ceiling. There’s still not much of a ‘song’ there, but it’s something.
Crititcs' Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars.
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2015.