Manson Family Picnic – EP
Well I’ve written about so many famous bands this week you’d think I was aspiring to be Pitchfork, but fear not, I’ll always find the smaller fish more interesting, and it’s about time we got back to that way of thinking on the pages of Toad. Apart from the new Camera Obscura album, of course. Oh, and Elvis Perkins. And Bill Callahan. Anyway…
Manson Family Picnic are a deft bunch and this is a short but brilliantly assembled little record. There are lots of nods to neat little pigeonholes in this music, but the band somehow manage to dodge through all of them and produce an EP which, whilst it contains many familiar elements, is actually consistently surprising.
What I mean by that is this: each song seems to be born from a slightly different indie folk sub-genre, so if you only heard one of them you could easily type cast the whole record, yet if you listen to the whole thing it is not quite so simple.
Opener The Mistakes harks back to early REM (the melody seems like it could be straight from Green), yet the arrangement is still a lot thinner and more garage folk than that. Shit Diggers could be related to the gothic folk-stomp of the likes of the Builders & the Butchers. Later in the album they veer towards jug and then towards shoegaze indie, believe it or not, albeit played by an errant barn dance band.
They seemed to haveflirted with all the touchstones of the last five years of indie folk, without becoming unhealthily beholden to any single one. It is, as I said, very deftly done, and a very enjoyable record.
Manson Family Picnic – Shit Diggers
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Manson Family Picnic – Kentucky Waltz
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They’ve got an energy similar to Le Reno Amps i think. Its something in the song writing and the vocals.
I am not massively into Le Reno Amps, I have to confess. More out of ignorance than anything else, of course, no slight on the band themselves.
You have to see them live. They’re probably the best live band I’ve seen at wee venues. Total highlight of the last gig i saw them at was “Outlaws”.
Witness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGh6MYABQTI
Although I have to say Nice n sleazys did much better sound than that, what is it, Popmorphic…?