Dan Mangan ::: Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Taggart

It took me one minute and thirty-three seconds to fall in love with Dan Mangan.

“Road Regrets,” the first song on Mangan’s latest album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice, begins gently, with a few soft tones. Things build gradually from there: the muffled strumming of an acoustic guitar, a few electric notes, a bass. Finally, after ove a minute, drums. A crescendo builds, the energy grows, the song is about to explode — but then it doesn’t. Mangan takes us high and then drops us low, pulling most of the instruments out from under us, and we find ourselves in seven seconds of tranquil vocal free-fall. “It’s a cryyyyyiiiiiiing shame,” he croons. “Them’s the breaks –” but after this taunt, the drums kick back in, and we are carried back up and onwards.

The great pop climax does come, but only near the very end of the song, and only after another rise-drop-repeat cycle. It’s this capacity for unexpectedness within the well-trodden framework of folk-pop that first endeared Dan Mangan to me. The quality is demonstrated regularly on Nice: the earnest vocals of “The Indie Queens Are Waiting” belie the song’s slyly observed, Wharton-esque lyrics; “Basket” begins with sad resignation but shifts suddenly into shouts of defiance — only to collapse heartbroken at the end.

Surprises, though, can only surprise you so many times, so it’s lucky for Mangan that there’s more to him than musical plot twists. Nice’s title is taken from a Kurt Vonnegut work, and appropriately Mangan is quite a literary songwriter. Each song is populated by distinct characters: the irresolutely aging man in “Basket,” the frantic, strung-out scenester of “Tina’s Glorious Comeback.” In “You Silly Git,” the character may or may not be Mangan, declaring “The songs I sing are all about myself.”

Also featured on Nice is a track that has probably become Mangan’s best known thanks to its 2009 CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award for Best Song. “Robots” is a catchy little song with an easily discernible analogy that will resonates with many people. If this sounds dismissive, well, that’s not entirely my intent — “Robots” is a fine song, but Mangan has many better. His gift for narrative and his gift for melody are each carried further at other points on the album, marking “Robots” as an excellent starter point but certainly not Mangan’s magnum opus.

The crush comes on fast and heavy, but Nice, Nice, Very Nice is no fling. This is an album for the repeat listener, an album to play repeatedly in the car, peeling back the layers as you peel away the streets, or to cuddle up to with a cup of tea on the sofa on a rainy day. Nice is a keeper, a re-read, an record to have a long and satisfying relationship with.

(Didn’t your mother always tell you to marry a Nice guy?)
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Nice, Nice, Very Nice will be released in the U.S. on August 10.

Dan Mangan plays in Portland as part of Music Fest Northwest on September 10.
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