Serena Maneesh: No.2 Abyss in B minor (2010)

 

Como les ocurre a la mayoría de los émulos del Shoegaze que toman como punto de referencia a My Bloody Valentine y su Loveless, a Serena Maneesh se les compara constantemente con éstos. La referencia es innegable, pero este S.M. No.2: Abyss in B minor tiene componentes más que sobrados para emerger como un buen disco en sí mismo, dejando atrás las necesarias comparaciones con MBV. Es innegable que Loveless era una obra maestra, pero todos estos parientes más o menos próximos tienen su punto de originalidad y de frescura que aportar a un género que continúa estando más que vivo. Serena Maneesh afirman que han grabado su disco en una cueva, en un ambiente más distendido -según sus palabras- que el del estudio. Ésto puede ser cierto, y así se explican temas como Melody for Jaana, o Magdalena (Symphony#8), la suite-noise que cierra el disco. Entre medias nos encontramos con auténticos pildorazos del mejor Shoegaze/Noise-Pop regados con infinidad de ruidos, pianos, vibráfonos, flautas y demás artefactos que crean preciosas atmósferas-noise (Blow yr brains in the morning rain, Diwswttd, Reprobate) y las que son dos de las mejores piezas Shoegaze de los últimos tiempos: la egregia Aisha Abyss, que es una tremenda composición de cerca de ocho minutos donde cabe de casi todo: Noise, Experimentación, Free-Jazz al más puro estilo XTRMNTR de Primal Scream; y el single I just want to see your face, tremendo tema en la mejor onda MBV, y en el fondo canción de amor -volvemos siempre a los orígenes-, en el que la voz de Hilma surge altiva como la dama del lago. Disco que lleva algo en el mercado y que no ha acaparado demasiadas buenas críticas en algunos medios, aunque ya estamos en The JangleBox para llevar la contraria y afirmar que este Abismo en Sí menor es uno de los mejores discos de Shoegaze de los últimos tiempos, y como tal va derecho a nuestra columna de favoritos.

Serena Maneesh – No.2 Abyss in B minor (2010)

“This time around, Serena-Maneesh face down the Loveless challenge more directly and bravely than any of their neo-shoegaze peers. While most effects-pedal new jacks are content to let their guitar whoosh enhance their diffuse hooks, Serena-Maneesh use noise and pop against each other, staging an internal war in every single track. The band does write hooks, but those hooks have to claw their way through layers of wriggling noise to reach sunlight. To get to track two, album-highlight and single “I Just Want to See Your Face”, you have to make it through “Ayisha Abyss”, a seven-minute instrumental motorik dirge caked in crackly, inscrutable shards of walkie-talkie chatter. And you’d think “Face”, a three-minute love song, would prove a lot friendlier, but no, not really. Even there, everything seems to be fighting everything else, as staticy half-formed guitar riffs push against each other, and the melody, while pretty, never quite resolves. Serena-Maneesh make your ears work.
More often than not, they reward that work. There’s nearly as much XTRMNTR-era Primal Scream here as there is MBV. It’s fun just to hear the way they orchestrate all the chaos on a song like “Honeyjinx”, where, at any given moment, you’ll hear quasi-medieval flute-tootles, windchimes, narcotized vocals, and gigantically misanthropic doom-metal riffage. On the album-closing “Magdalena (Symphony #8)”, acoustic guitars and rippling bongos sweeten the mood but can’t pierce the thick, viscous coat of synthetic drone that slathers everything.
But the problem with any album that invites this many comparisons to Loveless is simply that it’s not Loveless. As on that album, the songs feel like they’re whirling so far into the stratosphere that they might fly apart any second. But the basic melodies on Loveless were strong enough to carry the burden of the effects, and the same can’t always be said about Serena-Maneesh. Like Primal Scream, they rely a little too much on seething cool when any sort of deeper feeling would go a long way. Elvira Nikolaisen’s vocals may have a certain mysterious, icy beauty, but it’s not the kind that hints at big things going on beneath the surface. Meanwhile, when her frontman brother Emil sings, he doesn’t even have the icy-beauty thing to fall back on. So it’s easy to admire the roiling conviction that makes the album go, but it’s a lot harder to love the actual songs that that conviction yields” (pitchfork.com)

MySpace / Cómpralo-Get it