Send "Kingsbury Manx " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 On the Kingsbury Manx's 2000 self-titled debut, artist M. Scott Myers painted a house for the cover, set in the middle distance but crowded off to the side, overlooking a geometrically jagged shoreline. Nine years, four albums, and two labels later, Myers has painted his fifth Manx cover (sixth if you count the one for their 2003 EP Afternoon Owls), this time a photorealistic cathedral so gargantuan it can't all fit into the frame. This evolution from a house of man to a house of god is potentially misleading, as the North Carolina band has made no such spiritual or musical evolution. They've remained about the same size, picking up new tricks with every album but barely changing their approach at all. Sure, they were fuzzier and scratchier on middle child Aztec Discipline, but they soon abandoned that tack.Not that they need to change things up all that much. Their shambling, subdued, sophisticated Southern folk-pop-- which is soft but never mellow, and uses slow tempos almost as a statement of defiance-- sprung forth fully formed in 2000, and since then they've explored different facets of that sound, turning it over in their hands to study every angle and possibility. On Ascenseur Ouvert!, their sound remains as durable, as engaging, and as immersive as ever, their lyrics gently witty and their arrangements subtly intricate. "I never walked on water but I keep my body dry," sings Bill Taylor on the loping opener "Walk on Water". "A dirty hand wipes dusty cobwebs from my eyes." That couplet, boosted by Ryan Richardson's harmonies, sounds crucial to the album: Perhaps it's an acknowledgment of the four long years between their last album and this one. Real life intrudes: There have been new babies, jobs that actually pay, moves, upheavals....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| While it arrives a long four years after their last album, The Fast Rise and Fall of the South, The Kingsbury Manx’s Ascenseur Ouvert! (that’s French for “elevator open!”) finds the band’s sound more or less unchanged. As usual, the Manx aren’t out to make grand artistic gestures, but rather deal in nuance and subtlety. While change may not be on the agenda, the fine-tuning and perfection of the sound established on South certainly is. Frontman and main songwriter Bill Taylor here turns in another batch of consistent tunes and lyrics, but as usual, it’s the band’s rich arrangements and attention to texture that really shine. Keyboardist Paul Finn moves to the forefront here, as electric piano and organ take on a more prominent role than ever before. The band also adds a wide array of synths to the mix for the first time, most effectively on the atypically poppy “Over the Oeuvre.” Taylor, meanwhile, seems to have rediscovered his love of the electric guitar after the largely acoustic South. he turns in an unusually large number of polished solos here and revels in thick reverb and effects pedals to a degree unseen since the band’s 2000 debut. While the apparent fetishism for vintage equipment and effect (note the detailed information about keyboards in the liner notes) might result in gratuitous ornamentalism in the hands of other bands, the Manx always deploy their instrumental arsenal at just the right moment, taking care to situate even their most baroque moments within the context of a song’s individual dynamics. The rich mellotron and banjo passages in “Black and Tan” play like thoughtful rejoinders to the verses, the wordless vocals and strings on “Minos Maze” stand in perfect counterpoint to the skeletal guitars that precede them, and Taylor’s elegant solo on “Galloping Ghosts” serves as the perfect emotional climax to what is perhaps the album’s loveliest track. The band’s run through a wide array of different keyboards and bass and guitar tones attests not to a distracted preoccupation with equipment or need for constant novelty, but rather an intent focus on achieving just the right texture, and Ascenseur Ouvert is indeed, sonically speaking, one of the best-sounding rock albums in recent memory....full text |
| Tinymixtapes |
| There’s a lot to like and a lot to lump within Ascenseur Ouvert!, The Kingsbury Manx’ fifth full-length album. As a fey wild card of sorts in the indie community, the Manx don’t mind packing irk-fuls of annoyances and differing styles of soft-rock into their albums, and like the last few LPs before it, Ascenseur takes its sweet time to get crankin’. Not until the head-first thrust of “Well, Whatever” — at track four — do things charge up, its beautiful guitar breaks and haunting chords hearkening back to the best this North Carolina band has to offer. Then we’re back where we started with “If You’re on the Mend, I’m on the Move,” a dry, cruddy track that makes me wonder how much was sacrificed when vocalist/guitarist Kenneth Stephenson and Scott Myers (bass and keys) were manx’d from the lineup before the underwhelming The Fast Rise and Fall of the South. Actually, I’m not really wondering much; I think it’s obvious something was lost when the group fragmented. And yet hope still blooms on Ascenseur, suggesting that with time this new ensemble could mend into a strong unit. The evidence is in tracks like “These Three Things,” which channels older, pastoral Manx tunes to scenic effect (though the cheap distortion at the end doesn’t fit), and “Galloping Ghosts,” another back-in-the-day slo-mo Kingsbury signature song with a sleepy resolve and a passionate voice....full text |
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