Maneka
photo via Maneka Bandcamp

Maneka announces new LP 'Dark Matters,' shares "Winner's Circle"

Maneka, the current project of former Speedy Ortiz/Grass Is Green guitarist Devin McKnight, will follow his 2019 debut album Devin with a new LP, Dark Matters, on March 11 via Skeletal Lightning (pre-order). “I was afraid to really show all my cards [on the first album] and the second one I got to dig a little deeper, but this one feels like it’s what I’ve truly been going for,” Devin says. “There’s a lot about being a racial minority in this country, in general, that kind of ends up in the cracks. There are stories that get literally thrown out or explained away or hurt too much to talk about: the Tulsa massacre, sundown towns, etc.”

“I wanted to introduce the idea of indie rock fused with gaudy bejeweled blackness,” he continues. “We’re not ashamed of our success, we’re flaunting it.”

The album was engineered and mixed by longtime collaborator Mike Thomas, mastered by Beauty Pill’s Chad Clark, and it features drumming and backing vocals by longtime collaborator Jordyn Blakely (aka Smile Machine), plus drums on two tracks by NNAMDÏ and appearances by V.V. Lightbody, Nicola Leel, Michael John Thomas III, and Vivian McConnell.

The first single is “Winner’s Circle,” and it starts out as a sort of a cross between murky hip hop and chillwavey bedroom pop, before turning into roaring noise punk. It’s very cool stuff, and you can hear it below.

Maneka

Tracklist
1. Dark Matter (intro)
2. Zipline
3. Winner’s Circle
4. Jazz with Nnamdi (The Brunch Special)
5. The Glow Up
6. Runaway
7. On Her Own
8. Jazz with Nnamdi (The Cocktail Hour)
9. Maintain
10. Bluest Star