Manners are a band I first happened across when copies of both their 7″ vinyl EP Look Into, Look Unto and their cassette release White Wool Fog were included, unsolicited and free of charge, with the copy of the Whitehaus Family Album I bought some months ago.

I hugely enjoyed both their releases, and writing about The Great Valley yesterday, and browsing The Spooky Town‘s online shop I was reminded of the band, and the fact that I have rather carelessly failed to write about them beyond placing a couple of songs on podcasts.

This is one of the risks, I suppose, of the increasing separation between my digital music collection, and my inbox in particular, about which I write, and my physical music collection, which can end up a bit detached from the blog.  So I have been listening to Manners a lot, but never on mp3, despite having digital download codes for both releases.

I first heard Look Into, Look Unto, a 7″ EP which plays at 33rpm and is such slow music that even at the wrong speed it sounds plausible.  ‘She’s got an unusual voice’, I thought to myself.  Ah well, it was cool when John Peel did it.  Once I realised my mistake, I found a gorgeous recording, with a near-glacial stillness and ghostly harmonies.  For Edinburgh-based people, you could easily imagine these guys on a bill with the likes of eagleowl, although they don’t sound all that much like them.  It is slow, very spacious music, with generally minimal instrumentation, but the occasional, elusive swell of strings and vocals.

Manners – Setting Sun

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White Wool Fog is a different animal altogether, with the pace a lot quicker and fuzzier, with slightly chopped guitar bringing a bit more bite to the music.  It sounds a lot more like the familiar alternative DIY stuff we’ve been hearing over the last couple of years, or at least it does here and there.

At other times, everything will disappear and rumbling pianos and cymbal washes take over, pulling you back from the more normal alternative DIY indie etc etc kind of aesthetic with which this album flirts.  It’s deceptively varied, actually.  There’s something in the vocal which lulls you into thinking there’s a common approach across the whole thing, which is not really the case.  The shifts in pace and composition are actually much bigger than is immediately obvious, and it gives what can be quite a lulling, soothing album a sense of variety and interest many people ploughing similar furrows fail to achieve.

So, in short, a really good band, doing really interesting things, and one I really should have mentioned much, much earlier.  If you want to preview or buy either of the releases I’ve mentioned here then you can get them from Manners’ Bandcamp page.  I really recommend both.

Manners – Born at Dawn

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After enjoying the Vinylcast I recorded a couple of weeks ago, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to resist the temptation to come bacl to my record collection for this week’s podcast as well.  In fact, I think I can safely say that this is now something which is going to become a regular feature of Song, by Toad podcasts because… er, well just because it’s fun I suppose.

This week I went to the Shelter charity shop on our street and bought about half a dozen records: some Bessie Smith, Shirley Bassey, Ella Fitzgerald, Kid Thomas and his Algiers Stompers, and a couple of old Dylan records.

If I end up ever developing a taste for jazz I am pretty sure I will be able to trace it directly to a sense of misplaced nostalgia, and the charity shops of Scotland.  I am a long way from being a jazz fan, but there’s something so fitting about the crackle of vinyl on an old jazz record.  I never used to listen to this stuff as a kid, but for some reason I get a nostalgic feeling from listening to it now.

Direct download: Toadcast #159 – The Vinylcast 2

01. The Meteors – Wrecking Crew (00.22)
02. Kurt Vile – I Wanted Everything (07.16)
03. The Ad Libs – He Ain’t No Angel (15.01)
04. Tom Waits & Crystal Gale – Little Boy Blue (17.39)
05. The Velvet Underground – Stephanie Says (24.07)
06. U2 – Twilight (29.00)
07. Girls Names – Graveyard (33.19)
08. Rene – Destination: Mars (40.00)
09. Ambitious Tugboat – Age Rings (43.07)
10. Manners – My Will (48.27)
11. Otis Redding – Pain in My Heart (56.36)