by Will Floyd (@Wilf_Lloyd)
Maneka’s first two albums end with a co-sign that many artists can only dream of. I’m talking of course about encouraging words from his loving parents. On his debut, Is You Is, we’re played out by Maneka’s (born Devin McKnight) mom and dad reflecting on their experiences of racism, which leads his mom to an article she read the other day about the dearth of guitar heroes in contemporary music. Right on cue they counter, almost simultaneously: Well we know somebody! What about Devin?
When the charm of this endearing flex wears off, you might take a moment to contemplate what unwavering parental support could mean to a person of color trying to stake out their own territory in the mostly white space of indie rock. Perhaps what McKnight is trying to communicate is that in his particular circumstance, a can-do attitude will only get you so far, budding guitar hero that you may be. His sophomore album, Devin ends with another spoken-word piece called “Style,” where his mom emphasizes the importance of embracing one’s personal style, which in McKnight’s case is his unique sound.
Motherly love notwithstanding, her assessment is clear-eyed and accurate. Maneka makes music that is extremely difficult to pinpoint or categorize, even as the fault lines of genre erode year by year. There are elements of grunge, shoegaze, punk, electronic, slowcore, and jazz, all swirling around murky, slacker-dude vocals that sound at times like they might be pitched down and played at quarter speed. On his third full length, Dark Matters, McKnight does not waste a second of the album’s thirty minute runtime, coming through with his most introspective, socially aware, and eclectic project yet.
The opening title track announces the loose prompt that inspired the album: an epiphany McKnight had while binging space documentaries in order to alleviate the insomnia he was suffering studying America’s horrifying racial history. He realized that, “With dark matter, it’s there but it’s not: Just like our history with race.” The song is a moody, retro synth instrumental accompanied by some chopped up, manipulated vocals about the phenomenon of dark matter. “Dark energy makes up 96% of the universe… science has started to wonder: what is dark matter?”
The implications of this metaphor and the haze of haunted, sleepless nights cast their eerie, twilight-blue glow over the rest of the album. Even if by coincidence, the music feels like it’s in conversation with the filmmaker Barry Jenkins’ use of the color blue—the light of the moon erecting safe spaces for collusion, escape plots, or radical self-discovery.
This is where McKnight enters the story on Dark Matters, on the creeping slowcore of “Zipline”: “I said my prayers to the moon / bathing in the light of it / is how I cleanse myself / I see the same light in you / Whatever that means to you”. For the two people in the song, personal potential is something acknowledged in sacred privacy. The subtle werewolf-ish AWOO at the end succinctly conveys that whatever this person is becoming is an illicit secret to be guarded.
Things continue to play out in the shadows, or at least in secret. Like on the genre-hopping “Winner’s Circle,” which pays homage to the widespread internet theory that Beethoven was actually black. “I seen you in the same clothes / in the same club / different make up,” McKnight sings over psychedelic trap beats. The song wanders into a fantastical synth line and culminates in a thrashing punk/garage rock outro. It’s probably the most unpredictable rock song of 2022 so far.
“Runaway” is a standout on the album and relative to Maneka’s entire catalog. Over Nick Drake-esque acoustic fingerpicking and through claustrophobic double-tracked vocals, McKnight seems to recount time spent visiting family in a former sundown town. “Stored in your bones is the feeling / You won't Survive here / And for 5 centuries / You would have been right to flee this town before Sundown / It happens to anyone brown as a backwood and proud like we were last Sunday.” The electric guitar line bolsters the song in the present, but the rustic, ominous strings insinuate America’s dark past lurking underneath. It’s a unique and remarkable achievement, to musically convey the experience of feeling history in the here and now—of an inherited memory seeping through consciousness.
The two jazz interludes (featuring Chicago instrumentalist Nnamdi Ogbonnaya) do well to vary the distortion heavy sonic palette; on future releases it would be interesting to hear how McKnight might fuse these two elements on a single song. Meanwhile, tracks like “On Her Own,” “The Glow Up,” and “Maintain” show McKnight has lost none of his ability to elevate basic indie rock and slowcore with his idiosyncratic lead playing and vocals.
For the first time in McKnight’s solo career the voices of his parents are nowhere to be found on the final track—no encouraging words, no stories from their past to guide him. McKnight is deep in the woods of his hero’s journey, and home has almost receded from the horizon. Things close out with the introspective but straightforward pop punk of “Bluest Star”. It’s got the catchiest hook on Dark Matters, and seems to tell the story of a formerly incarcerated person McKnight can’t help but feel he’s leaving behind as he achieves career success. “I was the one who walked away and made it out / I grew a rocket and some wings and I drew a crowd, without you / It's where you stayed / The bed you made / I bet it smells / Just like your cellmate.” Unlike the blue stars in space, this person never got to shine as big or as bright as they should have. We end at the beginning, in a way. In “Zipline,” two people discover their potential, and seem certain of their ascendance: “They’re never gonna stop us now,” McKnight insists. It’s hard to tell whether “Bluest Star” is a continuation of this storyline or not; but after stints playing the supporting role in other bands, and a solo career defined thus far by seeking self-understanding through family and history, the final image of Maneka ascending in a league of his own is stark.