Sunday, September 24, 2006
(8:20 AM) | Anonymous:
Did You Give Up Punk For Lent?
Sometime in 1994, I stopped listening to music. Not entirely, of course. But for the next six or seven years, it became a fading presence in my daily life -- something I did without entirely for months at a time, and didn't think about much otherwise.This change coincided, more or less, with getting married. It also overlapped with giving up a little of the crippling perfectionism about writing -- enough that I became able to finish work and publish it regularly. The flow of causality in all of this would be hard to chart. It was a period of decisions, obviously, but I'm pretty sure that "Okay, no more music from now on" really was not one of them.
Whatever the reason, then, the album Manos by the Spinanes, from 1993, was more or less where indie rock and I parted ways for the decade. (We still don't stay in touch all that often.)
The band's lineup was extremely minimal: one drummer plus a guitarist who sang. This has been imitated but not improved upon by others, In particular, I loved the guitarist's style. Her playing felt naive, but precise, and her voice seemed to be coming from some register between breathiness and strength. The drummer is skillful but also restrained (not always qualities found in the same person), using what sounds like a small kit to very good effect.
Looking around for commentary on the band, I find this entry from about a year ago by a blogger named Andrews Tsks. He seems not to have undergone anything like my own hermit-like withdrawl from the music world, but shares the impression that this was a pretty special record:
The overall feeling of Manos is one of intimacy: minimalist arrangements make every vocal nuance, every drum hit stand out, as if each minor decision made in the album's performance is communicating a message to the listener. At the same time, The Spinanes' music has the power to fill a room with warmth and light, enveloping the listener in its subtle but ultimately overwhelming beauty. How this band has become so obscure as they now are is a complete mystery to me.
Plugging the band's name into YouTube, the only item by them that comes back is this video from 1996 for a later song, "Lines and Lines." It's less spare than anything on Manos. It also strikes me as the most beautiful thing I've heard in a long time.
Elswhere online, there's an early and perhaps deliberately un-polished video for "Noel, Joel, and Me" (the second song on Manos).
By the way, I'm curious whether the title of the record has any explanation, or if the band just thought the Spanish word for "hands" had a nice ring to it. I'd prefer to think it is not an allusion to the extremely low-budget and quite awful horror movie Manos: Hands of Fate (sometimes derisively called Mangoes: Cans of Fruit) even though it turns out I once knew someone who was involved with the film. See this essay by Pat Littledog, a writer who lived one small town over from mine in East Texas when I was in high school.
On the other hand, if it turns out that the Spinanes did have that movie in mind...whoah. That would be very "plate of shrimp."
