The idiosyncratic but rewarding
Barbara Manning is a little too spiky and odd to fit comfortably in the Lilith Fair crowd, but her best work outshines those of her bigger-selling peers.
Manning's artistic restlessness and her tendency to jump in and out of bands and recording situations makes it difficult to follow her career -- her discography must be one of the most confusing in all of the '90s indie scene -- but it also makes her one of the most vital and interesting singer/songwriters of her era.
Born in San Diego and raised in Northern California,
Manning's first musical venture was 28th Day, a jangle band the singer/bassist formed with guitarist
Cole Marquis and drummer Michael Cloward in 1984. The group's promising self-titled EP was released in 1985 and reissued twice thereafter, on an expanded CD in 1991 and an even more expanded cassette featuring live tracks and outtakes released on Cloward's own Devil in the Woods label. But although
Marquis would remain an important musical ally for
Manning -- who recorded several of his songs on her solo records -- 28th Day split up in 1986.
Starting the attention-deficit-disorder-like pattern that would remain her usual practice for the next several years,
Manning's next move was to simultaneously join her friend Brandan Kearney's band
World of Pooh and start her solo career.
Manning's "Lately I Keep Scissors," possibly her best song, was both a highlight of
World of Pooh's 1989 debut
The Land of Thirst and the title-track to
Manning's powerful solo debut, which had been released the year before. Though
World of Pooh broke up in 1990,
Manning continued with her solo career, releasing the lengthy EP One Perfect Green Blanket in 1991. That EP's title illustrates
Manning's baseball obsession, which also fostered her next band,
the SF Seals, whom she named after a defunct minor league team. The SF Seals, which also included drummer Melanie Clarin (ex-Cat Heads; she had also played on
Manning's solo debut), guitarist
Lincoln Allen, and secondary singer/songwriter
Michelle Cernuto. The quartet debuted in 1993 with the brilliant EP The Baseball Trilogy, two old baseball-themed novelty songs, and
Manning's own "Dock Ellis," a suitably psychedelic groover about the first man to pitch a no-hitter while tripping on acid. 1994's disjointed Nowhere was very much a group effort, but by the time of 1995's
Truth Walks in Sleepy Shadows,
the SF Seals were firmly under
Manning's control; it's indistinguishable from her solo records.
Also in 1995,
Manning sang a terrific song on
Wasps Nests, the first album by
Stephin Merritt's all-star side project
the 6ths, and recorded a brief but powerful album, Barbara Manning Sings With the Original Artists, in collaboration with former
Young Marble Giants leader
Stuart Moxham that nicely slots
Manning into the jazz-tinged minimalism of
Moxham's own work. Finally, in this exceedingly productive year,
Manning released Northern Exposure Will Be Right Back, an experimental tape loops and noise collaboration with zine publisher/performance artist Seymour Glass under the name Glands of External Secretion. (
Manning and Glass had recorded a pair of singles under this name earlier in the decade; though two more Glands of External Secretion albums were released,
Manning's role in them was sharply curtailed.)
1997's
1212, named after
Manning's birth month and day, was originally planned as the third
SF Seals album, but
Manning decided early on to retire that conceit. Her strongest work since Lately I Keep Scissors, the album features "The Arsonist's Story," a complex, side-long suite that's one of
Manning's most richly satisfying efforts. By contrast, the 1999 EP In New Zealand features
Manning recording with a Who's Who of Kiwi musicians in a loose, live-sounding setting.
After a closet-cleaning set of singles and loose tracks, Under One Roof,
Manning formed a new band, the punk-poppish Go-Luckys, and recorded 2000's Homeless Is Where the Heart Is and 2001's You Should Know by Now. ~ Stewart Mason