Serena Maneesh

Artist: Serena Maneesh
Released: 2006

Etched on a clay tablet hidden in an ancient burial site deep in the heart of Syria are the Rules of Popular Music. Number one on the list is, “All trends must pass…and then return.” This is a lesson I learned the hard way in 1999. Just seven years earlier, it seemed as though “alternative rock” (a good deal of which wasn’t very good, by the way) had washed away the musical transgressions of manufactured pop and hair metal. Or so I thought. Actually, I remember telling my high school cohorts that we “won’t get fooled again.” That we late-term Gen Xrs and those behind us were far too savvy to fall for the major label swill that had been foisted upon our age bracket for the last three decades. Of course, that swill was being dumped upon us at that very moment, but I was more than willing to tolerate the Gin Blossoms, Silverchair, and god knows what else if meant never having to hear Slaughter or Perfect Gentlemen again. Jump ahead to the end of that decade, and we were stuck with Britney, N’Sync, O-Town, etc. I should have paid attention years ago to the final lyric in that Who song - “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

I suppose, then, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that “shoegaze” would return to the musical fold (Quick digression: for those of you who don’t know, shoegaze was a movement in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s where bands layered heavy amounts of guitar, bass, and drums, shot them all through distortion pedals, and occasionally used some nifty vocal processing to make some pretty thundering music. In a live setting, all of this took a lot of work and prevented the artists from interacting much with the audience, hence the whole “shoegazer” term for the bands). Now that post-punk has eaten itself, and since no one but Kasabian wanted to relive Madchester, I guess it makes sense to revive this sound Like post-punk, it has the advantage of never having been too popular to burn itself out, especially outside of England. Unlike Madchester, it didn’t suck as a musical genre (apologies to the Stone Roses and two of the Happy Mondays’ songs). Anyway, Serena Maneesh brings in the noise and leaves out the funk with their self-titled release. The comparisons to My Bloody Valentine are obvious, so much so that some of the tracks sound like outtakes from Loveless. There’s also a bit of Spaceman 3 and Spiritualized to be found in the guitar scrawls that wend their way throughout the album. And aside from the overly indulgent “Your Blood In Mine,” the lengthy jams that dot the CD come off quite well.