The Manikins

Reviews

The Manikins Swedish Woods LP

Sweden and garage rock is one of those combinations that always seems to work, and Swedish Woods is another gleaming example that evinces this axiom. The MANIKINS have been churning out high-energy heat since the late ’90s, and upon listening, one may be quick to think of the HIVES, fellow Swedes who formed a few years earlier. And while they would make a great double-bill to be sure, it would probably make more sense for the MANIKINS to play the afterparty—no coordinated suits, and a late night energy that you just want to keep going, sleep be damned. There’s also a little more variety to be found throughout these twelve tracks than what you usually get from their contemporaries. Swedish Woods brings in elements of power pop (“Rosita”), as well as more straightforward rock sounds (“My Last Time,”). It’s the soulful crooning and howling vocal delivery on “I Need To Tell You,” however, that cements this album as a real standout.

The Manikins Bad Times LP

Mostly due to their tour de force album Crocodiles, this Swedish band stood out from their peers in the mid-2000s stripped-down power-garage-pop period—thinking bands like TRANZMITORS, the SHOCKS, and the HEX DISPENSERS who were reinterpreting the BUZZCOCKS for a post-Bush world. Crocodiles came out in 2008 and I thought the band had hung it up. Over a decade later they are back with a batch of new songs, but had the supporting tour sidelined by the pandemic. The album lacks the production earnestness of Crocodiles, but despite cleaning it up, there is an angsty darkness throughout the album captured best in the tracks “It’s Not Gonna Be OK” and “Worse Than I.” The songwriting and change-ups have allowed the band to expand their sound and even style a bit. The standout track is the mid-tempo “Make a Run for It”. An excellent album that manages not to rehash or revisit a long-gone time but moves forward in a newly defined way.