Praise for “Oh Fortune” |
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| November 27, 2011 |
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Well, Oh Fortune has now been available in North America (thanks to Arts & Crafts) for a few months now. This week, it embarks on its European release via Berlin-based label City Slang. We’ve been fortunate enough to receive an overwhelming amount of rave reviews and press. Here are some tidbits.
“Packed with grandiose Grizzly Bear harmonies (highlight – ‘Rows of Houses’) and slow-building, orchestral touches (‘How Darwinian’), Oh Fortune spans a wider spectrum than its folky core might imply, adding a grandeur and a refreshing cerebral spin to proceedings.”
- NME
“This is a perspective that strikes, simply, as wise, a fact that is really what separates Mangan from similarly scruffy singer-songwriters, to say nothing of pop musicians in general: Oh Fortune is one of the rare albums that is a kind of education in how to be human in a strange and — as its namesake amply demonstrates — harsh world.”
- The National Post
“Canadian acoustic troubadour invents post-folk…a great artistic leap…Mangan serves up the welcome alternative”
- Q
“Oh Fortune offers deeper delights and songs you can truly sink your teeth into.”
- Exclaim!
“Hugely impressive… An album of songs with wry, razor-sharp, self-observational lyrics and arrangements that are deceptively complex.” (****)
– The Times
“He released a career defining record, and came back with something much bolder and self-assured than just another song writer record.”
- Herohill
“After hearing Oh Fortune, my heart dropped and my lungs were filled with anticipation. There simply was no room for air, let alone words.”
- The Fulcrum
“Oh Fortune offers musings on the darkness of our times, but the album really resonates because, deep down, these are really Mangan’s stories, his concerns and his questions, delivered with a reinvigorated wit and a reinvented sound.”
- The Vancouver Sun
“Mangan has created a land of dreams on Oh Fortune, showing the same signs of artistic restlessness which have characterized the output of bands like Radiohead and Wilco in recent years. Change can be painful and unsettling, sometimes it’s easier to turn back, but great artists know how liberating and exciting new music can be.”
- The Line Of Best Fit
“Textured, poignant and meticulous as an expressionist painting, Oh Fortune will leave an enduring print in your mind.”
- Hour
“With that fuller and more expansive sound, a Polaris Prize is certainly within reach.”
- FFWD
“A cathartic masterpiece, rectifies the unrest beautifully, earning Mangan a warranted likening to Bon Iver. What’s most impressive is Mangan’s ability to address difficult metaphysical questions without sounding too inflated.”
- Vivoscene
“[Mangan] has leapt ahead not one or two steps, but three or four. ”
- NOW Toronto
“Oh Fortune serves as a major landmark for Canadian independent songwriters, and will likely be seen as one of 2011’s strongest homegrown efforts.”
- Western Gazette
“Mangan’s raw, haunting timbre easily evokes the slate-grey skies, the foreboding trees and the damp chill of a sleepy Northwestern logging town where are nothing as they seem and hidden heartaches linger close to the surface (think David Lynch’s Twin Peaks). This is spine-tingling good stuff from one of Canada’s best songwriters. ”
- Uptown
“Dan Mangan’s always been an unusually sharp example of the singer-songwriter: packing clever hooks with world-wizened lyrics that seem awash in personal details while still being capable of delivering on some universal insight. I suppose that’s really the name of the game, but Mangan’s always been a little better, his songwriting a bit tighter and more confident, with more going on under the surface than. Oh Fortune, his third full-length, only further chisels that reputation into marble.”
- Vue Weekly
“The Vancouver folk singer’s second is much more full but still as stark and beautiful, brilliantly employing horns and strings to support his honeyed baritone.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer
“Warm, cold, up, down, dirty, clean, Mangan has mapped it all out quite astutely, with an impressive attention to even the most minor details. Like a tidal wave in a goldfish bowl.”
-Rhythm Circus
“Although the Vancouverite and Polaris Prize shortlister is the maitre d’, his voice perfectly able to become more gravelly should the crescendo warrant it, this neo-rootsy album feels like a collaborative journey, as if the entire village was needed to enthusiastically exorcise his own dark lyrical demons.”
- Montreal Mirror
“Oh Fortune refuses to take up residence in any pigeonhole”
- Ottawa Express
“it is “Rows of Houses” that blows everything else out of the pool here. I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s one of the songs of the year…Impressive.”
- Impose Magazine
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