Dan Deacon takes A.D.D. music to a level never reached by predecessors. Psychotic and confusing come at you all at once. References to movies, missing audio equipment and faulty iPods stream out of his mouth like an excited toddler tripping over words. Nonstop banter bleeding over everything can at times be exhausting. You sort of think you know what's going on but like that toddler, never 100% sure. Just some of the colorful madness that is the spectacle of a Dan Deacon party. Represented it seems, in equal parts from the overworked mouth of Deacon and a bright console filled with doohickeys powering the actual tunes.

Though it seemed like all of Deacon's non-musical performance antics are random in design, defining his gimmick in such exclusive terms is to deny Deacon’s ability to disarm an audience. Love him or hate him, there is no doubt he effects. Observing the teenage Denver audience you could clearly see his ability to drag the crowd into his mad world. Proving how easily the sheep will follow in several ways – once by opening up a giant circle and kicking off an impromptu dance-off or convincing one kid to spin around with middle fingers blazing at his sides keeping it “sassy as fuck” as directed. ‘Cool’ was checked at the door. At one point he challenged the crowd to some movie trivia by acting out scenes from Star Wars - arguably the crème de la crème of geek films, especially when obscure scenes are used for bait. Bizarre all around. Jabbered non-sequiturs tapped directly from the unfiltered id of Deacon constantly filled the room. Often in response to his apparent need to acknowledge every single shout out from the crowd. Always between excited when older stuff was requested, and self-hating when "the certain something needed for that song was left elsewhere."

“This is the only fun I have all day,” he said with a slight defensive tone. A perfectly obvious hint that the majority of the day is a quiet build up for the absurdity of the evening. This continuous rap brought to mind what a word association exercise might resemble when participants are limited to sufferers of severe hyperactivity disorder. And so we end with a third mention of A.D.D. or similar inflictions. That’s about right.

Tourdates
07-06 Kalamazoo, MI - Diamond Star House #
07-07 Detroit, MI - Scrummage University #%
07-08 Brooklyn, NY - McCarren Pool ~
07-09 Toronto, Ontario - Sneaky Dee's #
07-10 Ottawa, Ontario - Zaphod Beeblebrox #
07-11 Montreal, Quebec - La Sala Rossa #
07-12 Cambridge, MA - Middle East Upstairs #&
07-14 Chicago, IL - Union Park (Pitchfork Music Festival) !
07-21 Baltimore, MD - Whartscape Festival

# with Video Hippos
^ with Jana Hunter, Michael Leviton
$ with Nomo
% with Benny Stoofy
~ with the Octopus Project, Erase Errata
& with Big Digits
! with Yoko Ono, Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues, Clipse, Mastodon, Iron and Wine, Girl Talk, Grizzly Bear, Voxtrot, Battles, Califone, the Twilight Sad, Fujiya & Miyagi, Oxford Collapse, Beach House, William Parker Quartet, Professor Murder, Ken Vandermark's Powerhouse Sound