Dan Deacon

Baltimore’s Dan Deacon specialises in a kind of pawnshop electronica, making music out of a mountain of leftover gear from rave’s heyday with the same tenacity the Ramones used to attack their three chords. He sings the anthemic choruses you find on Animal Collective or Man Man albums but when it comes to the music, he has more in common with what you’ll typically find on Jason Forrest’s Cock Rock Disco and Kid606’s Tigerbeat labels. Deacon’s frequencies have attitude and he enjoys his BPMs at gabber speed. 2006’s Acorn Master EP, his first proper release after numerous CD-Rs and mp3s, was compelling but ultimately could not transcend the novelty value of its disparate connections - it was fun but vacuous. So, it’s a pleasant surprise to see that Spiderman of the Rings gets over that hump pretty quickly. Whereas Acorn Master had a blatantly off-the-cuff feel, here Deacon goes maximalist by building an exuberant wall of Casio sound worthy of Phil Spector. Deacon takes what could have been another cheeky electronic album reared on current indie rock, where earnest is the new irony, and turns it into a meticulously crafted 21st century pop one-of-a-kind. Impressive.