The Manning Files

Barbara Manning might be the only musician that Pavement and Roches fans can get behind with equal enthusiasm. She can write a great singer-songwriter-y confessional like “Talk All Night” or “Someone Wants You Dead” but strip it of cloying lyrical junk; she was a product of the Bay Area’s indie-rock scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but her lo-fi aesthetic was never off-putting. In fact, part of the pleasure of listening to her records is the casual way she’d toss off a mash note to the Fall, or use a pair of scissors as a percussion instrument.

Which gets us to Super Scissors, a new box set that collects remastered versions of Manning’s excellent first two solo albums, 1988’s Lately I Keep Scissors and 1992’s One Perfect Green Blanket, and adds in a batch of demos, live tracks, alternate versions, and radio chats (including one which she ends by exhorting her listeners to “keep your pecker up!”). The booklet includes appreciations from a host of musicians, including New Zealanders Graeme Downes, Robert Scott, and David Kilgour—a few of her biggest influences. A lot of female singer-songwriters from Liz Phair to Laura Veirs owe Manning a debt, which make these records more than a Gen X snapshot.

More info on the box set here. And this MP3 track is an excerpt from an acoustic demo of “Scissors,” recorded in 1986 and included in the collection.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 11:18 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.