The Bad Penny (beta)

Ever run into a stranger wearing a T-shirt of a band you like, strike up a conversation and realize how much you have in common? That maybe they’re your doppelgänger, even? And then, the deeper you get to know that person, it dawns on you that their taste in music is actually superior to yours? But at that point you’ve already exchanged phone numbers and promised they’ll be your +1 at an upcoming gig you both really wanna see and then you get so nervous about meeting up with them at the show because you know you’ll be distracted from the band’s performance and instead obsess over your inferiority complex to your new amigo to the point that you second-guess whether it was even worth attending said show because it’s induced more anxiety than excitement in the marrow of your bones?

Does that ever happen to you?

We had a hunch Maneka (a.k.a. Devin McKnight of Speedy Ortiz and Grass Is Green) was onto something cool way back in 2017, when we got our mitts on a copy of their debut, Is You Is. Admittedly, we gave it a listen after reading that a description that touted the release as “future-space alien-dream-post punk.” Five years later, Maneka dropped Dark Matters, in which the artist “deftly explored the anxieties of working as a Black man in majority white indie rock spaces,” according to his press materials.