Maness Brothers “Hill House Sessions” 2026. Romanus Records, limited edition tricolor “Nebula” variant. Love love love these trad/garage blues rockers from Missouri. Maness Brothers are, indeed, brothers with David on guitar and vocals and Jake on drums and vocals. We first caught the duo back in 2017 when they opened for Brother O’Brother (along with SERVICE featuring former Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Russell Simins on drums — see here for that post and a great story David Maness told us about discovering JSBX when he was 11 years old) for BoB’s Neon Native album release show in Indianapolis. We caught them again in Indy in 2019 at Romanus Fest. Hill House Sessions is their first full length in over 5 years and it’s a scorcher (the liner notes state the album was recorded over the course of eight months back in 2021).  A mix of traditional Southern blues, grungy growls, electric guitar shreds and a family orientated DIY punk attitude. the opener “The Way That It Is,” “Tammy Jean” and “Let It Roll” are all rollicking blues ass-shakers with gravel country roads vocals; “Life” is a blues-country bender with an ear-worm infinity hook that excellently devolves into controlled garage chaos (one of my top picks for sure). “Workin’ Man” blends grunge and metal with bendy blues for a sound so big it rivals the 80s hair bands (but wins for better music). “Sometimes” too leans heavy and raucous while the album closer “Luna’s Lullaby” opens has an adorable spoken word from, I’m guessing, one of the bro’s young daughter and moves into a lovely, sparkling, dreamy instrumental that is, as advertised, a (blues) lullaby. It’s been several year since we’ve seen Maness Brothers perform and I’m hoping they will tour the upper Midwest soon.