Dan Mangan at the Vogue Theatre

“Hometown shows are my favourite thing in the world”, Vancouver’s own Dan Mangan declared to the crowd at the Vogue Theatre on Friday night. On a stage decorated to match the cabin where the album was composed, Mangan and his band played his latest release, Natural Light, in full. From the quiet surrender of “It Might Be Raining”, to the bittersweet crescendo of “Melody”, they worked their way through the thirteen songs, ending with a simple sing-along of the non-lexical vocables on the final track, “Hit the Wall”.

There was little discourse between songs, but the crowd interrupted each transition with resounding cheers and applause. Midway through the album, the somewhat sombre “Soapbox” was interrupted twice with calls for help from the crowd, and the band paused to allow these fans to be assisted out of the theatre for support. Though Mangan debated whether to move on from the song that he thought might just be “too heavy”, he responded to the call from the audience to play it “once more with feeling!” He jumped right back in with bellowing vocals and a few vigorous strums of the guitar, finally finishing the song with a renewed energy.

With the album finished, Mangan indulged the crowd with some older favourites. Following a brief promo for his excellent newsletter, Reality Shield, Mangan kicked off the night’s second act with 2009’s “Basket.” Alone under a spotlight with his guitar, he continued to play 2018’s “Fool for Waiting” and 2009’s “Pine for Cedars”, two songs that felt well-suited to the solitary portion of his set.

The full band returned to the stage for the tender tribute, “In Your Corner.” In a moving performance, the four sang together in the centre of the stage to reinforce the lyrics, “We'll be unified and sad / We'll be in your corner / Leave a light on when it's bad / And we will congregate and make a plan / We'll be in your corner / We'll all be in your corner.”

The second half of the mellow evening was picked up by a boisterous performance of “Road Regrets” that rang out into the crowd. Many in the audience sang along for this early favourite and for much of the set, building up to the end of the show when it seemed that everyone in the theatre was belting out the great refrain of “Robots”. Opener Bells Larsen joined the group on stage for this (almost) final song of the night while Mangan meandered through the crowd and sang surrounded by his hometown fans before returning to the stage for the emphasized finale.

“Robots need love too
they want to be loved
by you.”

Though the band had seemingly left the stage for good, the crowd cheered and the lights stayed low, and Mangan was called to return to the stage. Though he hadn’t prepared an encore, the crowd was treated to one final song – a new one – that closed out the harmonious evening.