At times, Mancari’s vocals take a backseat to the subtly creepy, yet still warm, synthesised instrumentation.

Three years after her debut solo album, Good Woman, Becca Mancari returns with The Greatest Part — a twelve-track project coming in at thirty-two minutes. Having no former exposure to her work, neither her solo projects nor her presence in Bermuda Triangle, I had no real expectations about the album. Fortunately, I came out impressed as Mancari weaves a solid final product for the most part.

‘Hunter’ opens the album with a moody, and surprisingly energetic at times, sound. Mancari’s lyrics make for some prime atmosphere here and this introduces the album with some engagingly dark language. All the while, some fantastic instrumentation accompanies that brings an unexpectedly catchy quality to the music. For an opener it’s strong, with vibrant strings that rise and fall in prominence on the track and overlapping vocals towards the end that create a really captivating sound. One track deep the album is already creating a promising sound, so I was keen to see where else the instrumentation and production would go.

‘First Time’ follows the opening track with a mellower vibe, bringing some reflective lyrics to life with airy vocals. The instrumentation here is easygoing and blends together excellently with Mancari’s singing, intermittently accentuated by the drumbeat and occasional swelling bass moment. The production throughout the track is really engaging, creating immensely catch moments of interplay between the different instrumental elements, the vocals, and the overall sound design. Overall, especially after repeat listens, Mancari follows her opener with a worthily catchy second track.

Where these two leave off, ‘Like This’ fades in with an opening initially reminiscent of more lo-fi instrumentation, only to redirect into another rhythmically solid track. The track’s only flaw is that at times after one-minute mark, some of its otherwise incredibly engaging components – its vocals and its instrumentation chiefly – take turns drowning one another out. Fortunately the track stands its ground and remains enjoyable, though I can’t help but feel it would’ve been stronger were these elements given more room to breathe instead of being crammed within a 2:23 runtime. Bad Feeling follows, immediately pivoting back to the moodier atmosphere generated by Hunter, with similarly intense lyricism brought along on a wave of welcome percussion, pulsating background distortion, and cool vocals. Lyrically, the repetition of ‘it’s gonna be this way for a while’ really dates the album to the very 2020 lockdown-driven isolation zeitgeist, and its later repetitions around the one-minute and fifty-seconds mark only reinforce this vibe. Even as it fades out, with the interplay of its various layers, it manages to feel one of the sadder and uneasier tracks on the project. It’s an excellent mood piece that knows how to avoid overstaying its welcome.

‘Pretend’ feels like a pleasant, but largely unnecessary, addition to the track list. Judging by the bar set by the album so far this track isn’t actively bad but it is comparatively unremarkable and brings nothing we’ve not seen done better, whether in vocals, instrumentation, or production. Fortunately, the quality of music keeps this track, or any, from tanking the album completely; I do wish that every moment could be as sonically engaging as those rough bass moments or faux-string synth moments that made ‘Hunter’ so strong. ‘Stay True’ is a short, near-questionable, interlude. However it maintains that melancholic and reflective atmosphere solidified by the first two tracks. Though it lacks Mancari’s singing in favour of a subdued monologue it still breaks the album up.

What follows is ‘Lonely Boy’, with an upbeat vibe to it that continues to play on the recurring questions of sadness, loneliness, and trying. The repeated asking of ‘are you a lonely boy?’ is an effective tonal reinforcement, though from a listener’s perspective it grows a bit stale. This fortunately means that the production can carry the track. And by the time you’ve grown bored of the question, the song is already drawing to a close that prioritises ever-present growling guitars over repetitive vocals, leaving a stronger impression than any redundant elements of the song. ‘Tear Us Apart’ is wholesome and bittersweet for the first half with eased acoustic guitar that gives way to sombre piano and elegant strings. This, in turn, creates a captivating cacophony at the two-thirds mark before returning to the same repetitive lyrics all throughout the song. It’s a shame that all of this album’s vocals could not do their respective instrumentals justice. 

The persistent themes of alienation come to a head in the ninth track, which hauntingly sings its titular ‘I’m sorry’ to great effect. At times, Mancari’s vocals take a backseat to the subtly creepy, yet still warm, synthesised instrumentation. Amidst all this, the drums and guitar build to yet another cacophony from which the vocals return against the same subdued instrumental at play earlier in the track. 

‘Stay With Me’ is the longest track on the album, and one of only two that break even the three-minutes mark, but this does not leave it feeling bloated the way that so many of longer tracks on albums do. Rather, Mancari employs some of the much-needed room to breathe I longed for with ‘Like This’, creating a track that takes the album’s component parts in expectable yet perfected new directions that really capitalises on the leitmotifs – both sonic and lyrical – of the album in engaging ways. I find this track in particular makes most sense in the context of the nine which precede it but it’s definitely one of the more rewarding listens that sheds some of the janky unnecessary elements that held others back from being this interesting.

‘Knew’ leans more towards the contemplative and intimate tone of tracks like ‘Tear Us Apart’ but as with ‘Stay With Me’ I find the longer length really gives the music more room to breathe. As such, this ends up one of the more tender songs, with a spacious quality to it as Mancari’s vocals accompany the relatively simple guitar instrumentation that morphs throughout the track enough to break things up but not too much to crowd the sound. Eventually, this culminates in an enthralling climax before spending a half-minute resolving itself with a ghostly choral effect underpinning lingering strings. What closes the album is the comparatively minimalist, but similarly intimate, ‘Forgiveness’, which gives Mancari a real moment to shine vocally. This leaves the album on a memorable, pleasant, and refreshing note that has me impressed beyond my initially neutral expectations. While some of this album stumbles over itself, with songs either packed too tightly or spread too thinly, the final product is a success overall. 

Mancari’s second album The Greatest Part was released on June 26th, 2020, and is available to stream now.