Myles Manley is a songwriter and alternative popstar from Sligo, Ireland, currently based in Dublin. His new album Cometh the Softies, out 20/11/2020, is the proud first release by Witter On, with distribution by Art for Blind / Cargo Records.
Buy Cometh the Softies on 12" vinyl now here.
Myles Manley
Originating in Sligo on the north-west coast of Ireland, Myles Manley is a singer/songwriter who has been releasing music as 'popstar' Myles Manley since 2012. With incisive and idiosyncratic songcraft, and a unique vision of the Irish experience, Myles Manley first distinguished himself with critically acclaimed releases Greatest Hits 2012-2013 (2013) and More Songs (2015).
Of mixed Irish and English heritage, Myles was born in York and spent his early life in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and West Kirby before his family settled in Sligo when he was seven years old. While completing a degree in mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin he travelled to New York and became involved in the antifolk music scene centered on the East Village's Sidewalk Café, where he began writing what would become the music of Myles Manley. An arresting blend of art-rock, outsider folk and pop sensibility, Myles Manley's songs offer a pleasingly discordant cross of acerbic gloom and Whitmanian jubilance.
Back in Dublin, an ambitious trio of early EPs, a 'career in a year', were compiled as his debut album Greatest Hits 2012-2013, which, together with More Songs, earned plenty of critical attention and comparisons to everyone from R Stevie Moore to Anohni. These releases also saw the creation of a distinct persona via fantastical music videos, which has become a central part of Myles Manley's self-presentation, seen most recently in a new series titled Aaa (2020). In the last number of years, Myles Manley has toured the Irish and UK DIY scenes extensively with his three-piece band, with the aim of building a sustainable practice as a contemporary folk musician. His debut album proper Cometh the Softies was released to critical acclaim in November 2020.
Cometh the Softies
Cometh the Softies by Myles Manley is a singularly thrilling mix of pop-song craftsmanship, outré rhythms and tightly-woven rock band dynamics. Originally conceived as Myles Manley's tongue-in-cheek contribution to the centenary of Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising, the project began as a set of folk songs written to jittery MPC500 backing. With Christopher Barry and Solamh Kelly enlisted as bandmates to reinterpret these frenetic beats, the music took a new breath of life, the lyrical focus widening to broad questions of identity and belonging. Ridicule by regimes of nationalism, capitalism and sexuality is evoked via the language of playground taunting, so too is an underlying transcendent mischief. The trio toured the UK and Irish DIY scenes extensively, sculpting the minimalistic and spirited live sound which is recorded faithfully on the album. The result is a music that acknowledges the anxiety of the listener in these desperate times, proffering a joyous clatter, and a thumb of the nose at bullying spectres.