..
:: Release Notes:
::
:: From pitchforkmedia.com;
::
:: Http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/s/serena-maneesh
:: /serena-maneesh.shtml
::
:: Cocoa puffs, meh. The better story is rock's 50-year failure
:: to make plain its furious soundmaker, the electric guitar.
:: Sound is vibration, pure tone is farce, distortion is social,
:: inevitable. No surprise, my faves who've struggled with that
:: pop vs. noise, structure vs. unstructure windigo-- Branca,
:: Hendrix, Velvets, Can, Sonic Youth, JAMC, MBV, Fennesz--
:: count for some of modern music's all-time greatest failures.
:: Here's another one.
::
:: Norway's Serena Maneesh take the main stage at Oslo's ?ya
:: Music Festival dressed like gypsies. Band leader Emil
:: Nikolaisen has a wispy moustache, Chick Corea-style,
:: Jimi-worshipping. His half-sister on bass could ring for
:: Nico, a cold, daunting figure from afar, no stage movements,
:: noble and grand, somewhat melancholic. The other members I
:: can't see. "What a fucking mission this band's on," I think.
:: "What a terrible fucking band."
::
:: They tinker on stage with a hint of motorik for 20 minutes,
:: then a stomp of it, no sign of stopping; people have no
:: stomach for this diskaholic bullshit, and tuck out for
:: chicken and beer and, I think, Roots Manuva. No cue, no
:: looks, Nico snaps a bassline from the stew of guitar noise
:: and disembodied voices, and suddenly Serena Maneesh are bars
:: into the festival's first and only mindfuck-- the one I went
:: several thousand miles hoping I might experience. Tucked deep
:: within "Sapphire Eyes High" is the only melody that matters
:: this fall, its chorus unintelligible because Nico's voice
:: dissipates upon exit-- so too do the stringy jangle and
:: generously amped kick. The breathy line goes for but 30
:: seconds, entirely too short, then dissolves back into the
:: abstractions that birthed it. So much noise it takes to
:: balance out so beautiful a moment.
::
:: They get it, Serena Maneesh, their demeanor electric and
:: alternating, built off antagonistic relationships. The band,
:: like the instrument, are apt to prove noise and un-noise are
:: of one cut. To that end, these aren't 11 songs so much as 12
:: blood-riling arguments. "Un-Deux" jumps forth and back from
:: sunshine pop to pork-pulled guitar noise, a clean but
:: 30-mile-wide gap between the two, more impassible with each
:: repetition. Two minutes, they give up. "Don't Come Down Here"
:: takes a ho-hum strum and hopes that the one fissure in the
:: progression-- a sloppy passing chord that butts with what's
:: before and after it-- will, with enough repetitions,
:: spiderweb and eat away the pleasantness. Nope. "Chorale Lick"
:: and "Candlelighted" meander half their lengths, soft-focus
:: guitars and brute syncopated grooves with nonsense floating
:: in and about, shrouding melodies too shimmering for bare
:: sight.
::
:: The album as a whole fights the twelfth, track sequence
:: playing up each song's coaster-like turmoil. A subtle move,
:: but it bleaches the whites, deepens the blacks-- rare
:: chiaroscuro for rock's faint of art. Listen, those fuzzy
:: guitar octaves that start the record could have led us
:: anywhere-- so for-fun, so worry-free-- but instead we follow
:: them into themselves, until this full-length debut implodes
:: with 10 minutes of dizzying, even skronky frustration, then a
:: shriek off the footbridge. Why are the stakes so high? Better
:: question is, why not?
::
::
:: Http://www.serena-maneesh.com
::
:: Http://www.honeymilk.no
::
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