A certain ratio.

Down­load: Ser­e­na Maneesh — Can­dle­light­ed

I asked Emil Niko­laisen [Han sagde: Naa, maend hvor­dan har du det? Og jeg gen­t­age: Meget godt, tak, maend du maa nok lige unskylde mit Dan­sk. Det er daarligt lige nu] if Ser­e­na Maneesh had begun record­ing any nye musik last night before their show at First Uni­tar­i­an Church. He said that with all the tour­ing there just has­n’t been time, and men­tioned anoth­er thing very impor­tant to Scan­di­na­vians [and oth­ers, mind you]: ro, or peace. Their out­sized tour­bus idling out­side impressed upon me the pres­sures to pro­duce new mate­r­i­al, so much hype, etc. not to men­tion play­ing Philadel­phia for the sec­ond time since March [SXSW & CMJ can actu­al­ly help…then hinder!]

Ser­e­na Maneesh played what seemed like an abbre­vi­at­ed set to the small, but enthu­si­as­tic crowd that gath­ered in the base­ment. Abbre­vi­at­ed because when they last vis­it­ed, every­thing went late, very late, past one a.m. in fact, which is uncom­mon for the venue. This time the set last­ed lit­tle more than half an hour, forty min­utes maybe, and not quite as long as Bar­do Pond, whose set pre­ced­ed theirs. There was part of me that was hun­gry for anoth­er epic set of droney psy­che­delia, but that’s a lot to ask — too often bands try to deliv­er quan­ti­ty and fail for any num­ber of reasons.

For­tu­nate­ly, Ser­e­na Maneesh were able to main­tain high ener­gy and accom­plished some­thing few bands do in that base­ment: have good, dis­tinct sound, with excel­lent sep­a­ra­tion and nuanced lev­els for vocals with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the thump and bump in their rhythm sec­tion. It was more than a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing to see the crowd thin out as Bar­do’s set thud­ded into the night and I could­n’t help but think how much bet­ter served both the band and audi­ence might’ve been at a small­er venue.

See also: [Ser­e­na Maneesh @ F.U. Church on Flickr]