Dan Mangan + Laurent Bourque – Green Room – Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

One thing I really enjoy about concert-going is that from time to time, you get to hear some new material performed.  Sometimes this material won’t be officially released for a while, which makes hearing it that much more special.  In the case of last night’s show, both artists gave the crowd some new material, though some of it fared better than the rest.

Laurent Bourque started things off with his debut album, What We Talk About’s opener “At Your Door.”  This song is one that should be slightly more aggressive in the second half of the song, and though Bourque tried to do this, most of the audience — talkative and seemingly uninterested at this point — drowned out most of the song in noise.  Finally, before Bourque put away the acoustic guitar (he did bring it back at the end of the set), he played a currently untitled new song that sounded better than most of the material that was played during the set, which could mean good things for a possible sophomore effort by the local singer-songwriter.  Highlighting the set were the best moments from his 2009 debut, such as “All the Beautiful Girls,” and “Living in a Movie.” Unfortunately, the upbeat “Fall In and Out,” which wasn’t played last night, has become more like a concert rarity in Bourque’s setlist.

Bourque’s performance had some surprises — one of them was an extended guitar solo by Bourque himself — another was some really strong drumming from Jamie Kronick (haha, anyone?).  The audience was not the best, and not very quiet during most of Bourque’s set, but they settled down and started to listen more than halfway though, and for the last few songs, gave this guy the intimate calm that works so well with his songs, and gave him a generally decent amount of applause before he called it a night.

Headlining last night was Dan Mangan, whose performance was much anticipated from the moment he started preparing his guitar strings for action. Mangan is touring in support of his latest album, the critically acclaimed Nice, Nice, Very Nice, and played many of the fan favorites that make this album so good.  Highlights included the recent single “Road Regrets,” the heavy, sentimental “Basket,” and he ended his set with the major crowd pleaser “Robots,” which got the whole the audience caught up in a virus-like sing-along of the song’s ending “robots need love too/ they want to be loved by you.”  The songs throughout the set were lifted by the additions of flügelhorn and electric guitar, which added to a song such as “Indie Queens are Waiting,” or the upbeat opener “Sold.”  Even though this was by all means a fitting end to a very warm and fun event, the unpolished new material that Mangan played as encore numbers didn’t fair as well, but that didn’t cut down any of the applause that capped off a very strong show. If you wanted traditional, but very good, highway folk-rock, this was the show for you.  This performance should definitely have many fans in the city talking about Mangan, and the 26-year old singer-songwriter should be back during his next eastern Canadian tour with the reception he got last night from the audience. – Jordan Ghetler

Dan Mangan

Laurent Bourque

Photography by Kenneth Suss

Tags: April 20, Canada, Dan Mangan, Green Room, Jordan Ghetler, Kenneth Suss, Laurent Bourque, Montreal, quebec