Jack McManus is heading up the stairs of an old-time theatre in South London that was once owned by
Charlie Chaplin. It<#8217;s all flaking paint and musty carpets, and when Jack lets slip that the place is reputedly
haunted by one of Chaplin<#8217;s leading ladies, it<#8217;s all too believable.
A windowless former office at the top was where Jack<#8217;s debut album, Either Side Of Midnight, first began to
take shape. It was possibly helped along by the resident ghost, who <#8211; if she had any appreciation of music at
all <#8211; must have been twitching with ectoplasmic delight. The reason is clear as soon as you press Play: Jack
McManus writes songs like an old soul. That<#8217;s to say, they have the richness and, well, bigness, you<#8217;d expect
of someone who<#8217;s been alive for much longer than 23 years. If you wanted to go out on a limb, you could call
them future classics. But since Jack was only born in 1984, there<#8217;s also an exuberant edge that stops them
from being too damned perfect.
To begin in the middle, Jack - straight outta Bromley, Kent <#8211; originally wanted to be a tennis player (<#8220;I played
for Kent, and represented Great Britain in an international tournament<#8221;), but came to his senses when he got
into the Brit School of Performing Arts. He qualified on the strength of his trumpet-playing <#8211; he<#8217;d started at
eight years old <#8211; and assumed he would end up in an orchestra. The path he<#8217;s taken instead isn<#8217;t surprising,
when you consider who he went to school with; Amy Winehouse was in his year, and Luke <#8220;the Kook<#8221;
Pritchard was the year below.
Having said that, pop is clearly in the McManus DNA; his dad supplied pyrotechnics for big rock acts, and
accompanied several on the road. McManus senior worked on, among others, Pink Floyd<#8217;s <#8220;The Wall<#8221; tour,
before retiring to the less explosive life of a private-party DJ. Jack went along to gigs, and when Dad found
an abandoned drum kit in the pyro factory, his seven-year-old son decided to learn to play it. The drums were
followed by piano, then trumpet. By the time he arrived at the Brit School, he was virtually a one-man band.
Jack<#8217;s Brit years awakened him to R<B, soul and funk, none of which he<#8217;d heard much of before. Suddenly
he was exposed to a world of influences and that mix is what set him on his music-making path. That and an
unshakeable appreciation of the power of a big pop song: <#8220;I was brought up on classic pop and growing up in
Bromley I got to see <#8211; and feel - the reaction a big song could have at the end of the night in the local club.
I<#8217;ve never forgotten that.<#8221;
When he left school, Jack temporarily reverted to what he knew best, and got a job playing trumpet in the
band of the musical <#8220;125th Street,<#8221; which was playing in the West End. <#8220;The job included being second
understudy to the role of a New York City policeman. I had four lines in an American accent,<#8221; he winces. <#8220;I
was terrible, but I ended up going on 25 times.<#8221;
When his <#8220;acting<#8221; stint ended, there was time to focus on his music. Through a friend, he found the writingspace
in Charlie Chaplin<#8217;s theatre. He brought his trumpet along, using it to compose melody lines, and
found himself drawn toward a <#8220;Seventies vibe<#8221; inspired by the classic songwriters of that decade: Elton John,
Billy Joel, Tom Petty. (Jack<#8217;s mad hair, which he used to hate, is also a kind of tribute to that era.)
Originally the plan was to write his melodies for other people, because singing them himself was outside
Jack<#8217;s comfort zone. <#8220;It was only when I went to publishers with my demos, and they assumed I was going to
be performing them, that I thought of myself as a singer. Now I wouldn<#8217;t want to do anything else.<#8221;
Jack co-wrote <#8216;From The Rooftops<#8217; with Groove Armada for their Soundboy Rock album, and a spacey
version of his vocal propels the finished track on its Erik Satie-ish path. The warmth of his voice comes
across best, though, with a simpler treatment. Either live (a forthcoming tour with Scouting For Girls follows
his own acoustic shows) or <#8211; naturally enough - on <#8220;Either Side Of Midnight<#8221;. It<#8217;s an instantly-accessible,
refreshingly <#8220;up<#8221; album, as evidenced by the joyous first single <#8220;Bang On The Piano<#8221;. Other highlights are
similarly cathartic, including the beautiful piano ballad <#8220;Fine Time To Lose Your Mind,<#8221; which was inspired by
a rough patch in his life, and the album<#8217;s title track <#8220;Either Side of Midnight,<#8221; which recalls the glorious pop of
the Alessi Brothers.
It really is as simple as that: Either Side Of Midnight is an album of gorgeous, memorable tunes sung by the
only person who could sing them. Think the archetypal singer-songwriter is a doomy misfit? Meet the
exception to the rule.

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