With their latest single Gold, released May 13, 2025, The Manimals don’t just ask you to dance—they demand your transformation. Exploding from the speakers like a glitter bomb in a cathedral, this ecstatic glam-rock sermon delivers on every front: concept, spectacle, energy, and that rare emotional alchemy where absurdity meets sincerity and explodes in dazzling Technicolor. This isn’t just a song—it’s a ritual.
Fronted by the electrifying Haley Bowery, The Manimals are New York’s answer to the eternal question, “What if Hedwig ran a rock cult, but with more eyeliner and even more glitter?” Drawing from an eclectic stew of influences—Bowie, T. Rex, drag, punk, disco, Jungian mysticism, and party-god theology—Gold serves as a complete artist manifesto. It’s the band’s boldest declaration yet: music is religion, the stage is sacred, and transformation happens in the sweat and the tears of the dance floor.
Born out of the spiritual limbo of the pandemic, Gold emerges as the final chapter in a song series Bowery started when the world stood still and the rabbit holes of YouTube and alchemical philosophy ran deep. It’s not just about surviving isolation; it’s about turning suffering into splendor. Bowery, equal parts rock priestess and psychedelic philosopher, brings the ancient art of transmutation to the modern dive bar: “To burn, to purge, to cry, baby, to die— that’s how we turn into gold.” This chorus doesn’t whisper; it stomps in silver platform boots, then unexpectedly swerves into a glitter-drenched disco riff that sounds like Studio 54 got struck by lightning and reborn as a queer punk temple.
What makes Gold more than just a clever concept is the unrelenting fun of it all. Sure, there are Carl Jung references and occult nods, but they’re wrapped in funky guitar licks, punchy percussion, and vocals that duel, harmonize, and command like a revival tent gone rogue. Bowery and guitarist-vocalist Michael Jayne rip through the bridge like glam rock deities freshly descended from Mount Olympus, declaring “fuck with our brightness, we’re richer than Midas”—a line that’s both hilarious and deadly serious in its conviction. It’s tongue-in-cheek, sure, but it also burns with the desperate need to be seen, heard, and baptized in noise.
And that’s the beauty of The Manimals: they walk the tightrope between theatrical absurdity and raw human truth. You could almost miss the heavy emotional core of the song if you’re too dazzled by the rhinestones, but beneath the glam is something painfully honest. The yearning for communion, for rebirth, for the electric validation of a live crowd—they don’t hide that hunger, they sing it out loud, inviting you to join in the metamorphosis.
There’s something cinematic about the way Gold moves. It opens like a chant, barrels through like a glitter cannon, and exits with a ghostly monk-like choir that leaves you half-dazed, blinking in the afterglow. You feel like you’ve just witnessed a ritual, not a track. And you want to believe. Even if you walked in a skeptic, by the end you’re ready to paint your face, rip your shirt, and scream along under neon lights, begging to be transformed.
The Manimals have always been about more than music. Since 2011, they’ve blurred the lines between punk show, glam opera, queer party, and occult initiation rite. Their genre-fluid discography reflects a band unafraid to embrace contradiction—big pop hooks and messy distortion, blood and glitter, mythology and mayhem. Led by Bowery, who often performs looking like a lovechild of Ziggy Stardust and Carrie, they’ve cultivated a scene, not just a sound. Their live shows are part Rocky Horror, part sermon, part chaotic therapy session—and Gold feels like the ultimate set closer, the anthem to end all anthems.
So, is Gold a glam rock banger? A psychedelic treatise on spiritual rebirth? A disco-punk dance spell disguised as a single? Yes. It’s all of that, and more. It’s an invitation—to be silly, to be sacred, to be unashamed, and to burn it all down just to become something brighter.
In a world where so much music plays it safe, The Manimals take the glittered gauntlet and throw it straight through the mirror. You might emerge changed. You’ll definitely emerge dancing.
