Dishwasher Safe
The Manic Shine feature members who have studied music, not just in their bedrooms but at actual academic institutions and normally I'm instantly afraid of the recorded output of such people. An ungrounded prejudice undoubtedly but aren't they all? Anyway, The Manic Shine manage to dispel that fear on this, their first full-length record, Blindsider. There's plenty of talk of 'mould breaking' in the press-release but in all honesty the amalgam of sounds on this album are unlikely to startle any modern music fan. We're all walking encyclopaedias now. Hailing from well... all over the place actually: London via Syria via Scotland via Israel and Italy (choosing a football team in a World Cup must be a massive ball-ache) The Manic Shine are a polished and competent electro-tinged rock band.
The strafing of rock sounds - crashing drums, heavy guitars and the like - with bubbling, beeping synths is fairly familiar, just think Pitchshifter without the politics or Oceansize without the cynical majesty, but the guys that make up The Manic Shine have such a rapport and great chops that it generally works. The dancey break down in The Poet and the Lullaby feels shoehorned into place like a nineties band's attempt to appear relevant with a drum loop and distorts an otherwise ready made single. The electronics mesh better on Til Your Pockets Glow with its wah-wah'd funk guitar lick and on the meditative My Isle, My View. Guitar player Orren Karp leans back for an epic solo on Fuse atop yet another dextrous bass line from four-stringer James Hutchinson. Piece of Strange is an acoustic instrumental redolent of Davey Graham's blending of Eastern folk and blues and possibly the most obvious showcase of that multi-national quality to the band's make-up.
Experienced singer Ozzie Rogers bears some of the blame for a somewhat one-dimensional feel to Blindsider his voice sounding fairly middle of the road across the 12 tracks never shifting up or down a gear always sounding like a man singing in the sunshine at a particularly balmy English festival. Similarly, the lyrics are nothing special often falling back on well-worn rhyming couplets such as the prominent "I guess I'll wake up and make up... my mind" on Ashes for Answers and "Raise me up, raise me more. I am what you've been looking for". However, My Isle, My View does take an 'All You Need is Love' universal stance on human differences as does The Escape: "All the colours, the sounds, they don't drag me down" a welcome if naive throwback.
Blindsider has Hendrix aping solos, bass-lines fit for a Police record and sing-songy lyrics: in essence it's all very nice. The Manic Shine are talented players but nice doesn't always grab my attention whereas a bit of mania goes a long way.