Dan Deacon – Bromst

I was a relative latecomer to the sparkly synth-led delights of Baltimore native Dan Deacon, having only uncovered the marvellous Spiderman of the Rings at the tail-end of last year. A schizophrenic hodgepodge of lo-fi electronica and more complex, if light-hearted, keyboard-heavy compositions. His ambition sometimes exceeded his ability to deliver, but when it hit the mark it truly took the breath away. What it lacked, however, was focus. Ideas were flung all over the place without any real rhyme or reason, and as good as individual songs were, it didn’t hold up too well as an album. It’s an issue the follow-up has done much to address. As a result Deacon has created, not to put too fine a point on it, a f’in masterpiece.Bringing his classical musical education to the fore this time round, Bromst has a sense of completeness and structure that perhaps was lacking in its predecessor. 'Built Voice' nicely sets the tone. A slowly crescendoing mass of synths punctuated with trumpet, quasi-mystical chants and the trademark smorgasbord of twinkly pianos and glockenspiel. The steel-drum/pitch-shifted vocals combo of 'Paddling Ghost' and the insanely hyperactive keyboards of 'Woof Woof' hark back to the manic Spiderman days and that’s fine and dandy, but far more interesting are the slower, more considered songs that see Deacon add a surprising amount of compositional sophistication to his technicolour brew. 'Slow With Horns/Run For Your Life' is a case in point - an instrumental that starts off exactly as the name suggests, before segueing into a cavalcade of cascading, intertwining piano lines that‘s more modern classical than madcap electro-pop. And of course there’s 'Snookered', the coalescing of all of Deacon’s most engaging musical qualities into a song of quite astonishing magnificence. Sublimely effervescent, yet tinged with an implacable sense of melancholy, it sweeps its rainbow palette across the eardrums and renders certain music reviewers unable to convey its brilliance without sounding like a gushing fanboy. Needless to say it’s already my front-runner, by several light-years, for Song of The Year.Bromst is certainly not for everyone. If you find Animal Collective irritating, you may want to give it a wide berth. The chipmunk vocals, hyperactive bleeping and unforgiving density will grate on some like a giant cheesegrater of doom. It’s not perfect either. The charge could be easily be levelled that Bromst is essentially “Variations On The Theme Of Wham City,” and I’d be hard-pressed to argue . The chord sequences, the structures of the songs, the instruments used aren’t particularly varied and when he tries something radically different (the Arabic-style chanting of 'Wet Wings') it doesn’t really work. That said, quibbles about diversity seem moot when a formula is utilised as perfectly as it is here. At turns gorgeous, manic, ambitious, infuriating, majestic and totally joyous, Bromst is an almost impossibly sumptuous feast for the ears that makes most of this decade’s musical efforts seem lustreless in comparison. 91%Dan Deacon on Myspace