Deacon Around

Dan Deacon
Luigi’s Fungarden, Sacramento, California
Monday, Oct. 19, 2009
Words by Vincent Girimonte
Photos by Samantha Saturday

Dan Deacon’s set at Luigi’s Fungarden on Oct. 19 reminded me of that saying, “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” Manifesting this was a state worker boogying next to some teenage princess probably 20 years his junior; and Deacon himself, pleading with us to imagine a “sky of hair” above the dance floor. Suffice to say nobody was caring.

The Baltimore-bred electronic artist owns one of the more egalitarian live spectacles you’ll come across, and it’s anything but gimmicky, despite the merch peddler performing interpretative dance (which was a little gimmicky). Dancing around isn’t compulsory, just highly encouraged. If that’s not enough to get you moving, peer pressure eventually kicks in to where anybody not sweating through his or her shirt may as well be the chaperone. The result was a Fungarden smelling “like a farm,” as one hooligan put it.

Deacon set up on the floor, caved in with lights, amps and a throng of impatient youths savagely bouncing around near his board, which looks like it was made on Sesame Street. This preferred dynamic may be his referendum on the typical live performance hierarchy (the artist being up there, and everybody else down here, having all the fun); or, perhaps being among his crowd he can more easily organize dance-offs and the ubiquitous “human tunnel”—each making an appearance at Luigi’s. There’s an element of wedding MC in Deacon’s shtick, the one that comes free with the venue and wants everyone to be happy while waiting for the buffet. Sometimes you need that guy.

I would hesitate to call Bromst, Deacon’s second full-length release and the primary source material for Monday’s set, “experimental” if he himself didn’t sometimes classify it as such. Admittedly, this is probably out of my own misinterpretation of the word “experimental,” as in you can’t shake your ass to it. Live, the tone is surging and rich, bringing to mind that “noise in tune” adage—but this is also pop music, implying some accessibility. Deacon plants playful, trippy melodies on the grinding rhythms and manic live-drum samples, and from there it just goes up and up at a breakneck tempo. It’s the music of frolicking optimists, and resonated well within the snug confines of the Fungarden.

He grabbed the mic every now and then for some cathartic chanting—not that he can sing, really, but nobody seemed to mind. By the end of the show he was Uncle Dan, commiserating with the Sacramento audience as a Baltimorean knowing what it’s like to live in a city consistently ignored by the hotshot indie tours. Though if this reputation is what brought Deacon here in the first place, it is one we can surely live with for a little while longer, at least until Uncle Dan returns.