S. T. Manville is a singer-songwriter from the Midlands. Back in 2019 he released Somebody Else’s Songs, a collection of pop punk covers that took songs from the likes The Offspring, Weezer and Bad Religion and reimagined them as humble indie folk numbers. The release proved a perfect introduction to Manville’s intimate, often gentle style. Simple acoustic guitar supported by careful arrangements of banjo, violin and accordion, conjuring so much feeling with relatively humble means.
The release was followed by the Little Victories EP the following year, a collection of songs that followed a similar formula but showed off S.T. Manville’s own songwriting. Again the earnestness stood out, each track capturing not only the modest moments of life but also the emotional depth which underpins them. Recent singles have suggested an evolution of this style, with ‘Stalemate’ in particular hinting at a fuller, more indie-centric sound, though one still wrapped up in the sincere tone.
Later this autumn, S. T. Manville will release the How to Belong EP, and lead single ‘A Rock’ at least suggests a return to the lo-fi folk of previous releases. “A Rock is a song I wrote for my kids,” Manville explains. “I guess it’s a reminder to them that I’ll always be there regardless of how tough life gets or how bad they fuck up.” As ever, it is the intimacy of the delivery that stands out, highlighting S. T. Manville’s ability to take highly personal images and themes and render them universal.
“A lot of the lyrics are from silly conversations we’ve had over the years,” he continues. “The first line “When you’re dark, black and white, I’ll be the crayon that colours in the sky” comes from when I was picking my daughter up from nursery one evening and I commented on how pretty the sky was. She told me that she’d painted it for me. When I asked her how she managed to colour it in she said she used a ladder. I loved the visual imagination, to be honest I spend most days in awe of the stuff that comes out their mouths.”
The song comes complete with a video directed and animated by Marina Sader, using over 700 hand-drawn images for the stop-frame style. “I had a pretty strong visual idea for how I wanted the video to look,” Manville explains:
I was imagining something similar to Raymond Briggs The Snowman, I wanted to capture the innocent childlike quality of the lyrics in a very sympathetic and organic way. When I came across Marina’s work I knew that she was the right person. She asked me to send her photos of us and film my daughter doing stuff like getting out of bed so she could animate it. I think it’s a beautiful piece of work and has kind of become synonymous with the song for me, every time I hear the track I visualise the video.
The How To Belong EP is out on the 17th November and you find out more from the S. T. Manville website.