The guitar is a challenging instrument to master; and I don’t mean garnering a superior knowledge of theory or working your fingers into lightning-quick fret pressers. The challenge of using the guitar, and what Serena Maneesh do seamlessly throughout their debut album, is to harness and use the noise it creates. All the distorted mess that any twelve year old can make with a 200 dollar starter-pack and three chords isn’t hard to use, but to blend it with eerie hooks and layer it into a hauntingly beautiful pop-song; that is mastering the guitar.
Serena Maneesh is one of those albums that must be “experienced” instead of heard. The sonic scope of this album is too great for earbuds or computer speakers. While airy chord changes and soft reverb ooze through songs, wispy vocals sing unintelligible melodies. Traditional song structures are scrapped, and understandably so; there’s just to much noise for verses and choruses. The result is a sound that is as powerful as it is comforting, as musical as it is visceral. Even with all the noise flying around these songs, nothing feels out place or misused.
Even when a song seems to be ascending into a destructive vacuum of reverb and guitar noodling, Serena Maneesh remind you that they have control over the noise.
The songs on Serena Maneesh are extremely well executed and produced, with a well mixed balance between noise and melody. In “Sapphire Eyes High”, guitar lines and poignant vocals dip in and out of the noise, propelled by a thunderous rhythm. “Chorale Lick” is a trippy VU style stomper, and “Your Blood In Mine” is an epic twelve-minute closer. Somewhere between the noise emerges “Her Name Is Suicide”, a strikingly stark and beautiful track, with female vocals that float across simple and bare hooks.
When the dust, and the noise, settles, what’s left is a challenging record that is a surprisingly easy listen. The kind of record that encourages that twelve year old kid buy that starter-pack in the first place, and to one day master the guitar. |