Dan Croll live at the Knitting Factory

by Samuel Hernandez

After seeing Dan Croll, you can feel the tingle of his upbeat rock and roll with pop tinges on your skin and the nostalgia for the concert hits days after. Dan Croll’s Knitting Factory show in Brooklyn inspires that constant reverberation to the past that is nostalgia, that wistful hoping that you can be instantly transformed back.

Nearly two years after ” Sweet Disarray” was released, the track still sounds fresh. Dan Croll is able to blend a laid back melancholia with lackluster emotion in his delivery. The songs are emotional and the background beats are often heavy with pop instruments. The introduction of the driving guitar feels like a kind of visceral knife, but the lyrics are delivered in a cold, detached way. Dan’s charm is the ability to turn what would be a depressing circumstance into a positive outlook. A twist to your depression.

Lead single “One of Us” is a mish mash of different energies. It begins with the almost throbbing guitar, the heartbeat of the song, and then jumps into a fast paced ride through the lyrics. Live, it’s just as energetic minus Dan playing all the instruments like in the accompanying video above. The crowd at the venue was packed and singing along, enjoying the rarity that it is Dan Croll in NYC. If anything “One of Us” is a jam-packed ode and persuasion to just leaning into the energy of the crowd and becoming one of us. The theme of the song is what the night felt like, a welcome introduction into a space where people are already enjoying themselves and where enjoyment is going to be guaranteed.

Each track was performed with the same passion, the same manic energy despite of how old or new. The entire night was a perfect night to listen to danceable, swayeable pop rock that pleads for forgotten loves, forgotten postures and positions that only people who have experienced love and longing can recall.