Dan Croll: Going Somewhere

It's quite unusual to encounter a ‘local’ musician with such a clearly audible ambition to arrive whole, and wholesome. But with two cherry-polished, glossy pop singles under his belt – their melodies rolling off the tongue like familiar names – Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Dan Croll is one such newcomer.

Having collared attention in 2012 with debut track From Nowhere – an emphatic, low-swinging slow romp that owed more than a little to Grizzly Bear’s Two Weeks but meant serious business with it – Croll released his second single, Compliment Your Soul, at the beginning of April. A shy, ticklish, then swooning, giving ode helped along by Swedish producer Johan Hugo of The Very Best, it sees Croll's edgeless vocals skate a swooping, whooping patina across glassy atmospheres, slip-slidin' guitars and cloudy brass – and strikes a pleasing contrast to its predecessor’s swagger.

“My mum’s favourite saying is ‘not everything comes first time,’” he writes to me from Chicago, where he's recovering from his first night out in America (“I think I recall a karaoke bar”) in advance of his band's performance at Austin, Texas’ annual industry piss-up, South by Southwest. “I couldn't agree more: I've worked really hard and some things may not have happened first time for me, but I've kept at it, and now everything seems to be going in the right direction.

“Up until about 17 I was aiming for a career as a rugby player,” he explains. “I was playing to a very high level and was playing under the watch of England selectors. However, a badly broken leg ended it all. I wouldn't say it’s fed in to my music, but maybe the competitiveness of the sport has made me driven to succeed.”

A graduate of Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA), Croll credits the school with bringing him into contact with “just a small class of about 24 of us – I don't think I would have found my current influences if it weren’t for some of those classmates.” Though he was born in Stoke-on-Trent, he counts Liverpool, where his family are from, as home, praising its “real strong mixture of different artists collaborating and working together,” and namechecking a huge roll call of artists and bands to check out: “Stealing Sheep, OUTFIT, Loved Ones, Eye Emma Jedi, Douglas Dare, Jethro Fox, Carnival Kids, Billie Van, Jonas Alaska, Mikhael Paskalev, The Staves, All We Are, Vasco Da Gama, Nadine Carina, James Canty, Ninetails, Dire Wolfe, Kankouran...”

---

“My music has been all over the place” – Dan Croll

---

In Liverpool, he says, “everybody knows everybody, and artists are closer together sharing influences, sounds and techniques." For Croll, these sounds are playful and big-hearted, informed by capacious rhythms from sunnier climes and the lush layering of ‘classic’ pop writers – and though his singles thus far have been nicely variant, with From Nowhere’s cunning bounce offsetting Compliment Your Soul’s stealth, they share a welcoming palette: colourful, and with a vivid sense of wide, open-eyed wonder. By his own admission, though, it’s taken him a little while to get there.

“My music has been all over the place,” he says. “I'd say it started out very relaxed and folky, then once I got in to LIPA it all changed. I started a math-rock Mars Volta-esque band, toured Norway and Germany with an electro rock-pop band, experimented a lot with African percussion and time signatures, and also played about with the production of psychedelia.

“My music is still going through these changes, and I love that – I think my debut album will be a real consistent blend of genres.” A little of the Nordic flavour he mentions is on display in two From Nowhere remixes by Casiokids and Baardsen, both dusky and dusty with reverby, melancholy touches that recall the inwards, electronic pop of Jonathan Johansson – and that rolling, easy-lowing African-inspired percussion is evident in both singles. It's become a bit of a hipster cliché to namecheck Paul Simon as an influence, and particularly Graceland, which has basically become a codeword for ‘I've listened to something global-sounding’: but Croll talks about Simon – along with Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson, natch – with an enthusiasm that defies scepticism, and prefers The Obvious Child from Simon's 1990 LP The Rhythm of the Saints, anyway: “The vibe of the track is just incredible, and the drive of the drums throughout is just magical.”

As for Bacharach: “This man is a genius, and I've always been a fan of his work, but it wasn't until I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that I really appreciated the amazingness of his song South American Getaway. The structure and complexity of that song breaks every modern songwriting rule.”

Croll's compact, cohesive songs aren't as overthought as you might assume from his studious dedication to the greats. “As you can guess by the title of the track, From Nowhere came, literally, from nowhere,” he recalls. “It came about while I was moving a newly bought organ (for £5 off eBay) into where I was recording at the time (an old disused school gym). I turned the organ on, hit the built-in ‘afro’ preset on the drum machine and played those three main chords. I’d never played those chords like that and I had no idea what I wanted them to sound like: they just came out of nowhere.

“Once I had those jokey organ drums down and the organ chords on top of them, I was able to build the song up layer by layer. The process felt amazing from start to finish. I do love the process of songwriting, and for me the most important part of it is creating those melodies that will leave people humming and whistling the song the following days. I'm trying not to think too much about my album,” he surmises. “I'm just going to keep writing my songs as I do every day, experimenting with different sounds and genres, and collaborating with other musicians and producers.”

Croll's perseverance is reaping increasing rewards – most notably, in 2011 he was bestowed with the top Musicians Benevolent Fund Songwriting Award of £5,000 in recognition of his grasp of the craft. “It's all felt incredible,” he enthuses. “It's given me a lot of confidence in my music and my songwriting.” But he's keen to emphasise that the success isn't going to his head, and throughout our interview reveals himself to be, more than anything, serious about and committed to his practice: “Due to the competitiveness and ever changing sounds/trends in the music industry, my feet have definitely remained on the ground, and I've continued to develop and work hard on my music,” he says.

“I wouldn't say I'm putting the finishing touches [to my album] just yet, I've still got a lot of work to do. It can be quite hard to decide when something is finished. I find the best way to deal with this is to just take a long break from the song, maybe a week or two, then come back to it with fresh ears. It's amazing how your opinion can change after time away.”

Above all, he says, he's just enjoying the journey. “As long as I keep travelling and playing my music to as many people as possible, I'm happy. So far, 2013 holds some really nice festivals, some more trips out to the USA, hopefully some cool collaborations – and I suppose the rest I'll find out along the way.”