Barbara Manning: In New Zealand

Barbara Manning is a geek, but unlike most geeks, she has channeled her geekiness into a viable creative outlet. She's geeky for firefighters and fire engines, resulting in a mini rock opera called "The Arsonist's Story," from her most recent album, 1212. She's geeky for baseball, the result of which was the moniker of her band S.F. Seals, named after a now-defunct San Francisco minor-league team, and the group's The Baseball Trilogy EP. Mostly though, she's geeky for music. The songs she chooses to cover are all over the map, and when she isn't performing her relatively straightforward material, she has The Glands Of External Secretion, a schizophrenic experimental collaboration with Bananafish editor Seymour Glass. As a music geek, the opportunity to record with some of New Zealand's numerous musical luminaries (including members of the 3Ds and the Verlaines) must have seemed like a dream come true. Perhaps for that reason, In New Zealand has a looser feel to it than 1212; the songs are all moderately paced pop fun made even more enjoyable by attempts to decipher the meanings behind them. Manning is a gifted singer and songwriter with a voice that burns with sincerity. She may also be the only person who could make a song called "Your Pies"—a song of food metaphors, recorded with Chris Knox and designed to insult an ex-lover—sound meaningful, even menacing. Manning keeps coming up with new ways to surprise listeners and challenge herself. But more importantly, she sounds like she loves what she does, and that love shines through every song here.