Dan Deacon Ensemble with John Maus, Woodland Bar, 12th January 2011

Wasting no time to dawdle in between shows, I decided I needed to catch a much talked about Dan Deacon show, who played at Woodland on Thursday night. I had had a taste of his brand of synth-electro-pop-nintendo-rave music on youtube, and had only heard that his shows were fantastic experiences. I somehow guessed correctly that knowing very little is probably the best way to go in to a Dan Deacon gig. 

Supports Toy Balloon had come and gone before my arrival and there was enough time for a drink before John Maus took the stage. Holy shit did he take the stage (with nothing but a microphone and his fist). His performance was best summarized by my gig-buddy's haiku:

John Maus backing track

Somehow you make it work well

Stop punching your face

I know nothing more about John Maus except that for half an hour it was extremely difficult for me to 1. NOT laugh, as I somehow found his mostly bizarre antics utterly hilarious while also kind of freaking me out or 2. tear my eyes away from the stage. The music was an intense blur of beats and synth, his vocals were an intense blur of Ariel Pink meets Future Islands-ish yelling, and the look on John's face was an intense blur of intensity. I needed a drink. 

A few G&T's later, Dan Deacon took the stage with a very cool set up involving a glowing skull on a stick, including his drummer, synth/pianist and (bassist?). As you can see, Dan Deacon is made up of all of the geekiest attributes of the world's best geek... He is complete with balding hair, huge glasses, a rolly polly body, an impressive beard, and a tendency to blather on quite a bit while projecting an overall charming awkwardness. Throughout the entire show Dan chatted to us ridiculously to the point where he was interrupted by the band more than once. For example, he was about to tell us an anecdote which ended up being "Remember that movie the Matrix? When Morpheus... oh shit, the song's starting!" leading gig buddy to wonder if his band members often have to derail the conversation to just get the show on with. 

Anyway, the actual show. Oh my god. I was looking for the best way to describe this gig but a video someone took of it describes it all for me. I am not prominently featured in it, THANK. GOD. Thanks to the infectiously danceable music and Dan's prescribed audience participation, the energy was fucking amazing, and had myself and gig buddy dancing in ways that I can at least confirm I haven't danced before. I remember even thinking "Oh god I hope no one is filming this" at the time. Shit.

Some of the things Dan made us all do, as you might be able to tell in the video, WERE:

- Raise our arms in the air and point to the ground, for quite a while, as his opening task

- Create a circle with two dancers in the middle, dancing, until they picked the next duo to replace them with their own dancing, and so on 

- One person starting a chain of people by running around the room giving us all high fives and then pulling people in at random, until THE ENTIRE AUDIENCE WAS RUNNING AROUND THE ROOM IN A CIRCLE

- A specially chosen audience member to lead us all in an interpretive dance number complete with crouching on all fours and potentially giving us all shards-of-glass-tetanus

- The audience bunching together and putting our hands on a person's head, then thinking of something we regret doing to someone and ESPing our apology or something like that - my (PRISTINE) hair was being scruffed like a dog but I've never felt more blissfully giggly

All this was possible thanks to the audience's willingness to be involved (apart from a few onlookers) and the fact it was not too packed and there was space to move. He ended on gleeful Crystal Cat (see below), leaving the audience with glistening, smiling faces, so empowered, exhausted, and rejuvenated all at the same time. This was a feeling normally reserved for the likes of the Flaming Lips, but Deacon was a cheaper alternative that was just as effective.

This is Dan Deacon. If the following filmclip does not make you smile, or at least intrigue you enough to watch it until the very end, then you would probably would not have not enjoyed the gig, and been one of those people who stood at the back of the room while the rest of us went apeshit.

Ahh I have two more gigs to review and they were both fantastic in their own ways, so grading is going to be difficult! But this show will stand out as one of the most memorable for me so I have no hesitation in giving it 9 excellent sweaters out of 10 (minus one because of John Maus alienation).