It's a radiant, playful, amused and fun Dana Gavanski who emerges from listening to the new album “Late Slap”, an artist who seems to have found an alienating sonic dimension that is not devoid of originality.
It may be thanks to the enthusiastic and spontaneous approach to the wonders of 80s electronics, the result of the collaboration with James Howard (Rozi Plain, Alabaster DePlume) and Mike Lindsay (Tunng, LUMP), but also to the significant presence of a Yamaha synthesizer DX7.
Lean, slightly eccentric, Dana Gavanski's third album is not without inconsistencies and risks, but the Serbian-Canadian artist's choice to caress the boundaries of folk-pop is often a winning one. Sober rhythmic geometries, trumpet blasts, a lively balance between electronics and riff skewed electric guitar shapes a set of songs poised between indolence and anger. It is therefore not strange that “How To Feel Uncomfortable” was the first single from “Late Slap”, a refrain new wave similar to a harmonic doodle that becomes incisive and captivating.
With a methodology in many ways similar to William Doyle's latest album, the Serbian-Canadian artist, regardless of the final identity of his songs, lets his imagination flow at the expense of more conventional writing. Dana focuses on the nuances of sounds and colors, nourishes the songs with contradictions and candid emotions, with impulses and pauses, alters their melodic and often airy flow with sparkling synthesizer touches and a grace that evokes Elo and Divine Comedy in one fell swoop (the whirlwind “Let Them Row”).
The Talking Heads-style dissonances of “Ears Were Growing” are intriguing and sarcastic and the synth stratifications that form the backdrop to the splendid “Ribbon” (a modern “Total Control” by the underrated Motels) are extremely brilliant, a song that concentrates in a exemplary melancholy and impatience.
The more folk atmospheres of his early days are definitely far away, as are the songwriting temptations expressed in the mini-album of covers “Wind Songs”: in truth, Dana also had to deal with a serious problem with her vocal cords, an event that changed her expressive style, shifting the axis towards songs with an 80s pop feel. An attitude that is on full display in the beautiful “Singular Coincidence” and in the more frivolous “Song For Rachel”.
For Dana Gavanski the new album is a determined attempt to test oneself in order to find a definitive and personal style, and despite some slight uncertainty and a series of intuitions to be explored further in the future – above all the enigmatic “Dark Side” where the rumble of the bass and a dark keyboard tone predominate – “Late Slap” is another interesting recording chapter from a constantly growing artist.
11/05/2024
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM