Customer Reviews

In New Zealand

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pop Kulcher Review: I finally got around to picking up this EP, released last year, and all I could do was kick myself for waiting so long. Barbara Manning was (until recently) a San Francisco mainstay, playing a lot of local gigs in support of her favorite indie artists while releasing a handful of solo albums (as well as albums with a rotating band of supporting musicians, the SF Seals). While her work with the band can be pretty fun, upbeat pop, her solo work places her somewhere between Suzanne Vega and Sebadoh's Lou Barlow; pretty acoustic pieces with poetic and articulate lyricism. She's long professed a love for the wonderful alterna-pop from New Zealand's Flying Nun record label (she did a cover of the Bats' beautiful "Smoking Her Wings" awhile back), and last year visited New Zealand and recorded a handful of tunes with various members of their rock underground (including members of the Clean, Bats, Verlaines, and Chris Knox, among others). The result is moody, subtle, and quietly edgy -- not too far afield from her own early solo work, but with some of the more jagged edges of the New Zealand scene slipping in now and then. It's a short album (30 minutes, a good third of which is taken up by a beautiful but meandering instrumental piece); but of the 6 vocal tracks, 5 are all-out stunning and absolutely worth having (the Chris Knox collaboration, like Knox's own work, is a bit too off-putting for this collection). Another notch in the belt of one of the greatest but least known female performers of the nineties.

For me this album is really the standout in her catalog. If you are a fan you have to check this out and even if you're not still buy it. It definitely showcases a quieter side that works beautifully on the first two tracks. I love the piano accompaniment as well as the help from the guys from Giant Sand. I agree that it leaves you wanting more but everything here is great. I would like to add that to me this isn't really lo-fi and actually when I listen to Lover's Leap the recording has the feeling of being in a small Jazz club.

This CD is superb! Its brevity is its only drawback, which is why I gave it only 4 stars. My personal favorite on this disc is "Lover's Leap". It is hauntingly beautiful enough to be sneaked onto Top 40 (that's not meant as an insult). Word has it that additional material from these New Zealand sessions is also worthy of release. Will there be a "Part 2"? One can only hope...This is excellent lo-fi driving music which warrants repeat listening. I'd love to compare her or her music with someone, but it's impossible. She is herself, and is well worth checking out. Every track is a winner, and it's time that people give this CD a try!

This is Barbara's best work in years, recalling the sparse, lo-fi beauty of Lately I Keep Scissors and One Perfect Green Blanket. Her New Zealand influences have always been obvious but until now she's never truly captured that cozy, desolate-sounding dynamic that is the signature of the Kiwi sound. Lots of breathy vocals, warm instrumentation and great songwriting on this album--the only complaint is that it's too short! "Patience is Gone" and the long instrumental "Aramoana" are stand-out tracks. Funny what leaving San Francisco and leaving Matador Records did for her; maybe she should move to Dunedin permanently. My vote for most beautiful record of 1998.

Why is it that everytime Babs releases a new album, some lazyass reviewer has to claim that it's "her finest album since Lately I Keep Scissors" -- which is true, I suppose, as long as we remember that 'finest' is a relative term -- Point being, not even the finest axemen of the Flying Nun stable can save bad songwriting. And Barbara seems to've been in a songwriting rut since somewhere around the heady heydays betwixt Scissors and the la primera SF SEals album, back when all those little 45s were coming out and she was still in The Glands of External Secretion... SF Seals were fun, but the albums remain in my memory for their covers, not for Barbara's songs... 1212 was just dull (and the reviewers claimed it was "her best since Scissors" then, too) -- In New Zealand's okay, the Clean cover's okay (unlike her Verlaines cover which was so godawful it was removed from later editions of the "No Alternative" CD), the musicians are tight, but again -- her songwriting stinks, to my ears -- compared to her older work (sadly now all out of print) these are more like imitations of songs than songs -- nothing here approaches "Haze is Free" or "Somewhere Soon" or "life Story" --

If you want that patented New Zealand, Flying Nun sound, buy albums by The Clean, Verlaines, Chills, Bats, Tall Dwarfs, Cake Kitchen, etc. -- you won't find it here. If you want Barbara Manning, hunt down the 28th Day CD, the World of Pooh album and singles, "Northern Exposure Will Be Right Back" by The Glands of External Secretion, the Heyday CD comprising Scissors and Another Perfect Green Blanket, and all those wonderful little 45s like "B4 we Go Under."

Babs! Write some good songs again...