Dan Vaillancourt
Melodic Snapshots
Angel 66782
visit Dan's website
also available on cd baby
This is an interesting mix of songs from this natural storyteller, who manages to spin and weave his snapshots and snippets of dreams and conversations into engrossing tales that capture the listener’s imagination. He is also quite a musician playing a plethora of stringed instruments: mandolin, banjo, bass, lap steel, and his custom made 10-stringed guitar. Though on this disc he is not doing it all himself and has assembled a number of other musicians to help him flesh out his songs. His music is rooted in folk, with sprinklings of that early rock and roll (think Bill Hailey and Carl Perkins) with some jazz licks just to spice it all up. These songs are all written by him and are assembled from those bits and pieces of life that stick in the mind and cause the mind to ruminate over the workings of things. Those pieces that seem never to leave and act on the mind like a dog worrying a bone. This music is an intermingling of funky, energetic, and a totally idiosyncratic mix that is truly his own. Like
so many other singer songwriters now, he doesn’t fit into one of those handy little boxes in an increasingly compartmentalized world, which makes him a much more interesting artist because you don’t know what direction the next tune is going to take.
This is his latest self-produced disc and it should expand his audience. It contains a good assortment of his touching as well as haunting songs. His performing energy from his live shows comes through on this disc. There is a quirky sense of the absurd that runs throughout the disc that allows the listener into Dan’s mind as it stood at this point.