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Mannequin Shop
tattoo ep
It’s a southern-rock romp with all the hallmarks of what makes the subgenre worth revisiting long after the Skynyrd’s and Allman’s departed: full, acoustic instrumentation, with a punchy kick supporting piercing, vibrant leads from a pristine, electric guitar. A hook that will call you in the shower the following morning.
All to set the grounds for a metaphor for love–its support, its unpredictability, its grace, its peril, but most of all, its life rushing at you and onward–a river.
If this were the only track you were to listen to from the EP, you’d be left smiling with what you have, yet not without contemplation and gratitude. It can be that joyful soundtrack to a country drive with your new or old love, it can be the vacation tune, it can be the poolside bop, or the soundscape for the individual who still has a hope for love and finds a reason to want to touch the water.
Regardless of what kind of listener you are, you will want to keep moving along through the journey the EP offers–if you can stop from hitting repeat on this first one.
by Erik Dionne
After starting with a warm acoustic’s steady, upbeat strum and a lilting pedal steel, a question:
“If I’m the reason you’re stumbling around in the midnight shade / I need to see you honey, I’m happy to lie in the bed we made.”
And with this hopeful unknown, the journey of the EP “Tattoo” by Mannequin Shop steps forward with its opening track, “I Can See It Now.”
What the listener and the speaker do not know at this point, however, is that this question of hope in romance–in wanting to want another–will form a path which once navigated cannot be untrodden.
But no one ever knows that until it’s over (or until they have finished listening to the EP).
Which allows us to bask in the splendor of the first track.
The EP moves along to “My Part,” which slows down the energy to something more pensive, after the excitement of new love takes a moment to see more of the timeline.
The slower BPM does not, however, limit the weight of track. The vocals cut through alongside traditional americana instrumentation that builds across the track to burst into a shimmering crescendo of big, sustained guitars, drums, and a melancholic banjo lead. The surge and release is powerful and never constrained.
After listening to it many times after many sittings, I have to admit, I thought it was a 2-and-a-half minute track–only to find out in writing this that it’s over five minutes long. Every second is necessary and adds a part of the journey, without ever feeling repetitious, thanks to the layering and building of sounds and feeling throughout the vocal performance.
Somewhere, this could easily be “our song!” for some couple, suggesting a beautiful union. For the EP, it shows half of the dynamic range Mannequin Shop is willing to lift and drop us to.
This, of course, brings us to “No More,” a five-fingered, hot-palmed slap to the face after the melancholy of “My Part.” Wide awake now, we find ourselves on the soundscape of a beach party (or Vegas!), but with lyrics that show maybe we’re not quite there yet… Not because we can’t be…but, you know… because I don’t want to leave the wife behind… she’ll be bored–missing out… or, it’ll give her something to hold over me…like she’ll say I always get to do whatever I want while she has to stay home with the kids and… I am talking about the song here! Mind your business.
Mannequin Shop is a chameleon. Americana, Country, Southern Rock–dipping into each of these genres and arguably more in the first two songs–then, for “No More,” to get into a totally different musical vehicle driven by figures along the lines of 90’s hits by Beck or Cake, to then be thrown into a bridge section which blasts us to a kind of early-2000’s pop-punk coda–all these colors, shifting incessantly, yet all the while we know we’re still looking at the same animal.
On paper, it makes no sense, but in listening to it, we sit and ride the spectacle. But it isn’t just spectacle, and it isn’t just bubbly fun. That introspection never retires. These lyrics show not just the prospect of turbulent waters (if we consider the metaphor in “I Can See It Now”) but actual turbulence–the nuanced tension that develops between two people who know each other as well as they know themselves.
Its remarkable lyricism in something that sounds so deceptively accessible. Listen for the groove and that fantastically belted “It’s amazing” line, listen again for the same thing. Listen a third then twentieth time for the reality.
“Tennessee,” lets the boiling water cool a bit for the fourth track. The singer-songwriter returns: clean acoustics, layered chorus harmonies, jazzy lead guitar filling the space to complement the melody, swelling strings to add an emotive whimper. A resounding hook for the rainy cafe, or the nearly-empty home.
Again, Mannequin Shop makes a love song where love is a term from much earlier in the relationship; coined and stuck and accepted, like a middle name not spoken aloud for years–still there, perhaps, but it means something different now–or has been said so many times in the past that it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
“What do you want from me?” and the hope (there’s hope, but it’s changed now), that maybe if the surroundings were those of when the relationship was clearer, the relationship would regain clarity.
Mannequin Shop doesn’t wish to leave us to wallow for very long – or at least to wallow in the same mise en scene. “C’est La Vie” rocks us out of our solemn stupor with big guitars, drums, and chorus-laden arpeggios to let a mid-90’s pop-rock-hit aesthetic lift up the energy, if not the actual tone.
The relationship is only just: touch-and-go, by a thread, running on fumes–there are countless idioms used for something moribund, but none of those have probably ever been suggested with the phrase “C’est La Vie.”
That irony is exceptionally employed here, and with the same kind of earworm-crafting alchemy Mannequin Shop has solidly established by this point in the EP. Is it the end of the journey? The song itself does not answer this question, but there is still one track left…
“Tattoo” is the titular track for the EP and representative of the journey Mannequin Shop has had us embark on. The song feels like the end of something. Beautiful songwriting to sonically conclude this EP, as well as lyrically. Find the meaning of the metaphor of the tattoo as you listen.
But at the end of this, it must be reflected on in its entirety: the journey for love is one of constant unknowns, and without spelling out the symbols, metaphors, and analogies employed so artfully by Mannequin Shop throughout this EP, the final song reminds the listener (or the lover? or the child?) that the journey–no matter its conclusion–is a section of our own life’s timeline, and no matter what, there is an inescapable result from any of it. There is much more to it in the music and the lyrics, but ultimately, the EP is a complete journey.
It starts with hope, and ends in hope, but how that hope has changed, taken new shape, and changed again is fascinating and contemplative. Mannequin Shop manages to force these questions within the listener without ever feeling belabored or burdened by didacticism or parable.
The songs themselves are deceptively approachable, sonically pleasant–fun, even!–but they read like classic, untidy short stories from Hemingway or Steinbeck. They show complexity, tension, and struggle–all things that require hope, but what to hope for ultimately remains itself a question, asked and approached beautifully across the entire EP.
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