Serena Maneesh – 'Serena Maneesh' (Playlouder) Released 26/06/06

Due out sometime next year...

by Shelley-Ann Staines
Friday, November 04, 2005

Serena Maneesh – 'Serena Maneesh' (Playlouder) Released 26/06/06

Watch Serena Maneesh - Drain Cosmetics

Even from the tentative yet driving opening cords on lead track 'Drain Cosmetics' you know that what Serena Maneesh have created in their self-titled debut is a double helix of sound; pulling your emotions and your head from the depths of melancholic splendour, past a veritable explosion of frustration, anger and grief, to the heights of angelic bliss and back again. Highlighting every blemish on your soul, so as not to forget the journey so far. This is seen no better than on closing track 'Your Blood In Mine', a twelve minute epic born out of gentle percussion and ghostly vocals into screams of feedback. Before you know it, you’re in an abstract wilderness of pain and panicked to the brink of insanity suddenly after nine minutes of liquid noise you’re alone in a darkened room filled only with the sound of a single piano playing the music of a lost love, broken hearts, and unrealised dreams.

With the help of some very capable friends, (Martin Bisi, Sufjan Stevens and Daniel Smith), Serena Maneesh travel from the Sonic Youth-esq rawness of Beehiver II to the disturbing and beautiful Her Name Is Suicide in the blink of an eye, and with just enough eighties-tastic guitar solo work in Selina’s Melodie Fountain to encompass a vast spectrum of rock influence, eclecticism is at the heart of this album.

Aside from being a piece of musical artistry, lyrically Serena Maneesh combine an element of introverted soul searching with the impulse to tear off social Elastoplasts, exposing wounds and displaying them insolently, in Beehiver II a sense of post-modern desensitisation smacks you around the head and rings in your ears, “I’m on the news ‘cause they found me in Ghana/Skinny and hungry I am hot for the lens.” Serena Maneesh clearly have a lot more bubbling under this impressively varied, vibrant and volatile debut.

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