Review Summary: Daniel's most vulnerable release yet.
Daniel Knox is a musician who has eluded me up until this past week. Going back through his discography, I've noticed that his upbeat, showtune-ish yet minimalistically haunting dark cabaret style of indie/baroque pop is both theatrical and strangely brooding. It's possible for both things to be true, and while Daniel has a bit of a comedic aspect to his music, the gloomy and jazzy undertones always present a certain melancholy drifting recklessly in the background. Sometimes his lyrics can make you smirk and at other times they make your head spin with morbid curiosity. Then again, sometimes his music sounds the same way. There can be a whole lot going on with horns and choirs or there can be a clean piano or saxophone break that really makes you relax. The range from pure goofiness to abrupt sorrow can really toy with your psyche, but Daniel always seems to pull it off, sometimes to his own detriment.
Mercado 48 is his newest full-length album and I was very curious as to how it would stack up against the rest of his catalogue. He has been a bit inconsistent, albeit entertaining, over the course of his career, but to me, this album brings together everything Daniel does well and brings it all to the forefront. The opener, ‘Worst of All Worlds’, is a track dominated by melancholically beautiful piano playing and Daniel's trademark haunting croons. It honestly sounds like Dracula writing a lovesong. Unlike his previous albums,
Mercado 48 has a twangy, gothic/alt-country vibe added to all of the darkness that gives the album a somewhat uplifting feeling to blend with the desolate, minimalistic production.
Dark cabaret wasn't a style that I really knew much about before I started listening to Daniel's discography. ‘Don't ***ing Move’ is a perfect example of the style in general with the showtune-esque singing yet feeling like pure desolation and loneliness overall. That's something that this man does so well, blending bombastic, theatrical vocals with a certain gloomy wickedness that feels like he could snap at any moment. That's the beauty of Daniel's music in a nutshell. While his overall style is based in a sort of folky, nighttime ritual sort of sound, he always manages to bring a sliver of light in as well.
The remote instrumentation may bore some listeners, but let me be clear, the minimalism and stripped-back approach of
Mercado 48 is where all the charm comes from. The dominant piano playing here feels like you're in a dingy, “hole-in-the-wall” jazz bar somewhere. It's classically romantic yet it invokes sadness at every turn. This dynamic really makes the laid-back approach pop. Sometimes you'll get smooth saxophone playing in the background and sometimes it's just Daniel and his lonely piano trying to teach you life lessons. The entire album follows the feeling of sorrow against optimism.
It's very possible that
Mercado 48 is Daniel's magnum opus while also being his most vulnerable release yet. You can drift off into dreamland as his croons wash over you like a tidal wave, dragging you out to sea. Right before you feel like you're drowning, the gorgeous piano pieces will pull you up just long enough to catch your breath before the despondency takes you back under into the pitch blackness. That dynamic is what sets this album apart from the rest of Daniel's discography for me personally.
Mercado 48 feels like he's pouring out his soul more than usual while also bringing about a sense of resignation to life itself. It's hard to say what kind of mood the listener needs to be in the get the most out of this album, but one thing is for sure, Daniel makes something out of nothing more often than not and
Mercado 48 is a perfect example of that.
