A Spotlight on Sligo's Myles Manley

Written for The Print (NUI Maynooth's student paper) for the 29th of November 2011 issue

              On the 13^th of November, I saw Sligo musician Myles Manley take to the stage for the Grand Social’s Saucy Sundays. After tuning up, Manley, without his backing band, performed an acoustic set of 30 minutes, which consisted very bravely of mostly material he has never performed live. Myles is not at the moment signed to any record label, but he grabs this with much optimism, glad of the creative control he has in independently recording and distributing himself. Previously having recorded as a solo artist with just his acoustic guitar, Myles has just finished recording a 7-track CD with his backing band, which is the direction he is looking to pursue in the future. At the moment, Manley is over in New York for some time playing gigs while he’s there, but he is looking to release his recordings in January/February of 2012 when he will be once more playing the Dublin circuit.

                At 7.30, Myles awkwardly stood at the microphone and started to play. As soon as his voice entered the room silence fell and eyes looked to the stage. It was an extremely unique, unusual voice, but mesmerising all the same. This is where Manley’s strong Neil Young influences can be best understood. His guitar work started very open, turning to a muted strum; Myles uses dynamics to the most effective degree in both his voice and guitar playing. The chords themselves are very open and dissonant, creating some discord. As the song finished, Manley awkwardly but graciously accepted the applause and started into the next song. This had more of a folky, very fluid melody in the guitar, with the rhythm pounding out. He sentimentally began “First time I met you, I thought you were a genius”.  The bass in the guitar droned through, the atmosphere in the room was both calm and rigid, not knowing what was the come until we got some relief with the line “Jesus, he met John,  John met George and Paul”.  He then rounded off with a soft adagio.

                In the next piece, Manley offered defiantly the line “I’ll find a way to make you mine again”, which returned through the song again and again. On the “mine”, he gave a wonderfully unsettling harmony with the notes from the guitar. The imperfect harmony became more and more haunting and twisted as the dynamics became more intense through the song and at one point, one man in the club exclaimed “He’s on something that guy!” With the next song, Manley threw out a childishly playful insult to someone – “He’s impotent, that’s why he’s raising his voice”. However, his pop hit masterpiece came at the end of the show, with the very memorable “I Fuck Your Wife”. Manley sang as though taunting, telling of what he does when you leave the house. He even wears your clothes. At the end of this, Myles coyly thanked the audience and stepped down for a pint. He was the most memorable performer of the night and well worth a look.

http://soundcloud.com/mylesmanley
  http://issuu.com/MSUVPSEC/docs/the_print_volume_3_issue_5/16

[Note: Though the headline calls him Sligo's Myles Manley and he is from Sligo, he is now based in Dublin and that is where he performs most of his shows]