Mariah McManus

At 19, Mariah McManus has the kind of voice that L.A. producers pull all-nighters to replicate. Twinkling xylophone and resonant piano intersperse with 808 in "Say It Again," a love song which nuzzles somewhere between Taylor Swift's earnest puppy love and The Fray's "Over My Head," but without all the mess.

Similarly, the heartbreaker "Shame on You" gives McManus an opportunity to coo, whisper and let her voice carry the song. Her debut album, Nice to Meet You, is jam-packed with songs sure to get stuck in your head — hear these two on this installment of World Cafe: Next. - NPR

The eager tunefulness of Mariah McManus’s music almost gets in the way. So does the crisp songwriting, which is judicious with word choice and emotional delivery. But Ms. McManus is more complex than all that on the beguiling “Nice To Meet You” (Catcher and Rye). That’s largely because of her sweet voice, which is sometimes direct and clear, and sometimes works over syllables using an aggressive tongue (with faint flickers of Bjorkian strangeness amidst the Taylor Swiftish purity). But it’s always deceptive, because so much of what Ms. McManus is concerned with on these songs is rough terrain. The words of “Make It Right” are almost naïve, but Ms. McManus sings them with gale force. And on “Anyway” she sounds petulant but is really deflated, singing, “I knew that someday you’d be leaving/Just didn’t know it’d be so soon” with punch, as if trying to push air out through each syllable. It makes the moments when she’s expressing true wonder all the more powerful, as on her new holiday EP, “Christmas Forever,” which has a jangly “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and a breezy tease of an original, “You & Me.” - NY Times

The eager tunefulness of Mariah McManus’s music almost gets in the way. So does the crisp songwriting, which is judicious with word choice and emotional delivery. But Ms. McManus is more complex than all that on the beguiling “Nice To Meet You” (Catcher and Rye). That’s largely because of her sweet voice, which is sometimes direct and clear, and sometimes works over syllables using an aggressive tongue (with faint flickers of Bjorkian strangeness amidst the Taylor Swiftish purity). But it’s always deceptive, because so much of what Ms. McManus is concerned with on these songs is rough terrain. The words of “Make It Right” are almost naïve, but Ms. McManus sings them with gale force. And on “Anyway” she sounds petulant but is really deflated, singing, “I knew that someday you’d be leaving/Just didn’t know it’d be so soon” with punch, as if trying to push air out through each syllable. It makes the moments when she’s expressing true wonder all the more powerful, as on her new holiday EP, “Christmas Forever,” which has a jangly “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and a breezy tease of an original, “You & Me.” - NY Times