Sprouting the kind of fusty, precious mushrooms that only the moist warm conditions of Crosby, Stills and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel and Elliott Smith could possibly engender, spring North Carolina’s own pastoral anti-hooligans, Kingsbury Manx. And what a winsome and inoffensive little cluster of talents they are.
Fronted by singers and guitarists Kenneth Stephenson and Bill Taylor, Kingsbury Manx are your above-average country, folk, psychedelic crossover. At times dark, at times wistful, at times caustic, at times surreal you’d be close if you drew comparisons to any of the artists mentioned above – but you’d be spot bollock if you tipped a wink in favour of Pink Floyd’s soundtrack to Barbet Schroeder’s 1969 hippie-film ‘More’. ‘De Da Damentia’, ‘Hunting Trips’ and ‘Dinner Bell’ recall the sweet yet sinister drone of the Floyd’s ‘Cirrus Minor’, ‘Crying Song’ and ‘Green Is The Colour’. In fact, ‘Aztec Discipline’ is arguably just another dystopian hippie road flick. True there’s nobody getting their kit off or indulging in spurious misdemeanours involving cattle but it’s every bit as gentle and as trippy as a Sunday at Woodstock, even if things are occasionally lifted with the frisky duelling horseplay of banjo led tracks like ‘Grape To Grain’ and ‘Fixed Bayonets’.
Having toured with Elliott Smith, Stereolab, and Calexico you could pretty much write the script yourself: it’s mellow, it’s dreamy, it’s lush, and although it may lack the warped lyrical flair of fellow bedroom troubadours like Damon Gough and Elliott Smith, it more than compensates with a probing, agile sense of melody.