Serena-ManeeshSerena-Maneesh
Playlouder, 2006
Numerical Feelings: 7.5
Sarena-Maneesh love repetition, I mean they seriously seem to want to jump repetition's bones. But to their credit, they generally use that, along with several other questionable choices, to their advantage. The music they make is called 'shoe-gaze', on account of the squealing, screaming edifice of engineered noise that dominates the mix: but whereas biblical shoegazer reference, i.e. Loveless, puts forth a demand for intangible lyrics and elusive melodies behind that edifice, Sarena-Maneesh blow their sound wide open, thrashing element against element in some expansive grating orgy. The more pleasant melodies within are not really obscured, but rendered too hot to touch from constant friction, and so still well out of reach of any relaxed listening approach. Meanwhile, art-punk guitars wail in spite, percussion twists into forms of alien mathematical beauty, and repetition renders bubbling discomfort into searing psychological trauma of epic proportions: and throughout, the band maintains perfect grasp on their sound, orchestrating it through physical sense, like a dance, like blind raging sex. If I were a note, I would stay the fuck away from these bitches, because after a few seconds I would never be welcome in the house of my parents again.
In engineering terms, therefore, the album is a masterpiece. That these sound manipulations are not just decorative gimmicks, but living forces as crucial to the music as any hook -- the canvas upon which twelve-minute epics of evolving brain-ache are crafted -- is astounding. In musical terms, that still leaves the album only part of the way stepped over into the realm of tangible artistic experience, and out of the realm of conceptual experimentation, or most of the way. But truly inhuman moments like 'Beehiver' hold the album back, and in general, where the music lacks memorable melodies or distinctive percussion riffs -- for although they can craft a towering epic out of basically one theme, as in the incredible 'Your Blood in Mine', they can not craft something out of actually nothing -- Sarena-Maneesh loses a bit of its luster. These are rare moments, overall, however, and in general it's quite a good sixty-minute migraine.
-7.30.2006
Serena-Maneesh is the first, and hopefully not the last album from the Norwegian band of the same name. It is helmed by Emil Nikolaisen, formerly 'Krazy Katzy' of the young punk band Silver. Pretty sure I'm not making that up.
Running Time: 58.15
Metacritic Score: 83
Track Listing:
01 Drain Cosmetics
02 Selina's Melodie Fountain
03 Un-Deux
04 Candlelighted*
05 Beehiver II
06 Her Name Is Suicide
07 Sapphire Eyes*
08 Don't Come Down Here
09 Chorale Lick
10 Simplicity
11 Your Blood in Mine*
(*: best to play)
(Metacritic belongs to CNET Networks, Inc. They give an accurate idea of general critical feeling.)
This Review Copyright twentypelicans.com, 2006
Running Time: 58.15
Metacritic Score: 83
Track Listing:
01 Drain Cosmetics
02 Selina's Melodie Fountain
03 Un-Deux
04 Candlelighted*
05 Beehiver II
06 Her Name Is Suicide
07 Sapphire Eyes*
08 Don't Come Down Here
09 Chorale Lick
10 Simplicity
11 Your Blood in Mine*
(*: best to play)
(Metacritic belongs to CNET Networks, Inc. They give an accurate idea of general critical feeling.)
This Review Copyright twentypelicans.com, 2006