Review: Serena Maneesh – No. 2 Abyss In B Minor
Serena-Maneesh – No. 2 Abyss In B Minor (2010) [4AD] // Grade: A
An agressive, hysterical My Bloody Valentine: that’s Serena-Maneesh. So much about No. 2—the Norwegian band’s second album but first for 4AD—sends me careening back to Loveless, back to high school and college, back to all those albums that popped my eyes open wide. The luxury of youth; it’s rare now, years later, to hear music that takes you to that same awestruck place, but here’s the latest Serena-Maneesh, totally knocking me over.
And though some of this wide-eyed wonder is, I’m sure, Isn’t Anything sense memory, No. 2 isn’t just some snap-and-lock repeat of shoegaze as a whole. It’s less rehash than reinvention; singer/mastermind Emil Nikolaisen may chip off bits of MBV, Primal Scream and Lush, but they’re crumpled with an overwhelming mania, all new-wave microedits and jittery drum fills, that’s nothing but the band itself. “Reprobate” and its catchy haywire chorus, the simmering garage of “Blow Your Brains Out In The Mourning Light”, “Honeyjinx” coming in like deathwish arena metal. Now contrast all that with the psych-trance lullabye of “Melody for Jaana”, a sweet little nothing to temper all the bittersweet panic—when Serena-Maneesh takes it down, they take it way down.
But that’s just the music. The easiest thing to describe. SM2 carries a certain intangibility, an air of, what is that, reminiscence? boiling with the heat of a thousand suns. And maybe all that depends on how old you were when you discovered Kevin Shields and Bobby Gillespie, how and when they spawned a revolution in your life, if you even care to find something that feels exactly that fresh and new and clean. Because A Sunny Day In Glasgow reminds you of a time, right? But Serena-Maneesh completely embodies it, then twists it all modern and heavy for you to marvel anew. No. 2 is an album to be felt, not heard. And that alone is worth its weight in gold.
