Philadelphia DIY lifer Maneka announces new album "bathes and listens" with two new tracks

In addition to past work in bands Speedy Ortiz and Grass is Green, Devin McKnight has long written his own music as Maneka, releasing his solo debut Is You Is in 2017. On 2022's Dark Matters, McKnight set out to explore the full range of his experiences as a studio and touring musician, delivering a striking, unclassifiable mesh of genre influence through which McKnight deftly explored the anxieties of working as a Black man in majority white indie rock spaces.

p: Juliette Boulay

On his 2025 follow-up, bathes and listens, McKnight focuses his vision on Maneka's musical identity, resulting in a more grounded album that still tests the extremes of McKnight's songwriting talent. Elements of shoegaze and slowcore are prominent, but engineer Alex Farrar's exceptional production (Wednesday, Snail Mail, MJ Lenderman) makes bathes and listens cohesive, yet still distinct from any one style.

"McKnight's songwriting sounds more purposeful than ever."
-Pitchfork, on Dark Matters

Maneka opens bathes and listens with a Pinback reminiscent verse on lead single "shallowing", alternating with heavy choruses before exploding with alarm-call guitar in the song's crashing coda. "shallowing's" huge ending sets up "dimelo", McKnight's crunched, faceripping ode to Carmelo Anthony (specifically Hoodie Melo). "dimelo" is urgent and instantly enthralling, completely swarmed by distortion, with only faint squeals passing through its shroud.

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Of the two songs, McKnight writes:

"To use a pro basketball analogy...sometimes you fancy yourself a volume shooting, isolation scorer, and a 'face of the franchise' type of player. But one day you're a bit older and you look up and the league is playing a different brand of basketball, and teams might still want you...but they just need you to fulfill a different role. On the road to this realization there are bound to be some humbling bumps along the way. Both of these songs were written around the same time when I might have been going through this and I think they both tell tales of coming to grips with that new reality in my personal and professional life."