Craig Manga, through the mighty Mangabros and via Submarine Broadcasting Company, delivers a new album in what's become a series of provocative, forthright anthems.
Nadayadayeller is delivered by Craig's ever nudging vocals, which spring right from a yelling, hardened heart and straight into a battered soul. In the Mangabros tradition, the album is unpretentious and as such (in a day and age when pretention reigns supreme), pure, melancholic gold.
Much of the album purrs like a Tom Wait's excursion that never met release, while other parts are angelic, though in an underlying, devilish way.
"Crawlspace of the Gods" (the big kickoff) falls into the latter niche, invoking Jerry Goldsmsith's Poltergeist and Lalo Shifrin's Amityville themes. It's a scary warm-up, but boy, does it ever set the mood.
"Ummm (M.O.T.H. Mix)" is its ushering, fly-in-the-eye transition, a movement where Craig ejects his guttural lament. It's an intro scream for identity, wrought with bad thoughts and a plea for a forgiving forgetfulness.
In contrast, "Albuquerque" is a subdued, domestic On The Road, a search within wide confines that prove tight in the end (a desperate twinkle in a tearful eye). It's a daughter's sorrow, a mother's defeat, which in turn constitutes the similar outcomes for us all, packaged with a melodious, Michael Ferentino vibe, but carried by Craig's gracious, why-oh-why cry.
"Sister Pariah", as crooned by the Sting-esque Glen Mclone (aka Glen Manga), is a sequel to "Albuquerque", for it builds a stringy succession of anticipation, though not for the best, just the inevitable. McGlone's pace is soft, serene, but no less apprehensive for such.
With "Salamander in a Burning Room," Craig re-enters, his tune bluesy, and like the best blues, fiery and reflective along the underbelly. On an allegorical level, "Salamander" insinuates snuffed dreams, of all that comprises life when reduced to ash, blown far and away to unrecorded time.
If "Salamander" is a declaration (an acceptance) of dust, then "Pink Frame" is a mocking look at its sugar-coated imprisonment. Craig growls and snarls his way through this one, its accompanying notes reminiscent of a machine (a brain) breaking down.
But when one hits rock bottom, one can only go up, and "The Tallest Man on the Planet" projects that ascent, in a fatherly salute that, through Craig's yearning voice, captures the fruitless clinging by a naïve, little girl who looks up to a man destined to fail.
"Kimono Skin" reinstates the dark bullseye, in a graveling assessment of endless collisions. Craig seems on the verge of tears in this one (each chord coddled by confusion and anxious prayer). His inquisitive honesty (of a childhood lost and a future stunted) can't help but pull at the heartstrings.
After the tears are dried, "Semtexting" gets real jazzy and sardonic. The melody, the piano-pinged succession, alludes to something swift but sour, lit by a need to flee. It also bristles of betrayal, answered by meanness, packed with a recipe for destruction.
"Bomb Origami" is the tick-tocking aftermath of such: a wavering, spiraling search that plots a plan, but to where exactly, with no road in sight, no map at hand.
The urge to search may be a timeworn whim, or so the Bowie-esque "Shrikeheart" implies, though there's also an acknowledgement of turning back, but perhaps what one turns to never existed. Perhaps, the clear picture was always blurred.
"The Shiva Palimpsest" is a here-and-now stretch, stuck in a long, hard ditch. It's a warrior's exclamation, sung from the gutter on those stormy nights when there's no chance of rain. It's short, sweet--truthful.
From this vantage, where can one go? "Here I Am, Here You Are, Here We Are Together" summarizes it in a finale that beats like an executioner's drum, tweaked by teasing tinkling. For Nadayadayeller, this is the end, Morrison's end to all ends, asking--no, demanding--justification for all the things one believed would and should kiss fruition, but of course, satisfaction is only ever a pipedream.
Nadayadayeller is a bountiful, intoxicating, existential masterpiece, a Mangabros sequel that stands on its own brilliant accord. Dig deep into it. Let it dig deep into you. Experiences like this--life lessons like this--only come, well, once in a lifetime:
https://submarinebroadcastingco.bandcamp.com/album/nadayadayeller
