jason stives reviews the new album from Manchester Orchestra …
If the opening track of Manchester Orchestra’s third album, Simple Math, implies anything, the Atlanta quintet are looking to give the audience something different, something that is more than a musical experience but a personal journey. As lead singer Andy Hull’s voice clamors gently over the track, “Deer,” he speaks to the audience in a drunken stat. “Dear everybody that has paid to see my band, it’s still confusing, we’ll never understand,” which sets in place the motive of this album, a concept piece about personal observation from a shrieking mad man who fronts a rock band.
As this woozy acoustic track reaches its closing, a wall of strings and fuzzy guitars enters the picture on “Mighty,” greatly enforcing the absent orchestras aspect of their ironic name. From here, the album deviates from any intentions (at least song-structure-wise), instead casting a wonderful series of songs strung together in a variety of styles. Both “Pensacola” and “April Fool” feel like the Manchester Orchestra of I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child, but besides being energetically exhausted by heavy riffs and breathless vocals, they are upbeat in the most cynical way, something the group has been known to press on its listeners.
Some tracks ooze an epic quality, while marring traditional song structure with a combination of psychedelic guitar crescendos and foot heavy back beats. Strong songs like the album’s title track roar into action with a blistering symphony of fiddles overlapped with Hull’s agonized voice of descent.
The one thing that has been greatly distinctive of Andy Hull as a musician and a songwriter is the personal nature of his words and meanings, never a dull moment and normally very blunt with specks of malice and dark humor. Hull said that the album is intended as concept album focusing on his own observations of love, marriage, religion and sex and, needless to say, the various styles convey a real emotional grounding and a personal journey of the mind.
Maybe it’s the nature of the heaviness of some of the album’s later tracks like “Virgin,” but Manchester Orchestra always tends to come off unintentionally dark in their execution. Something lurks beyond being just a rock band for this Atlanta quintet, its heavy, its raucous but so much fun at the same time. Maybe that’s why Simple Math doesn’t need to spell out its intent or who it listener is, and more than anything, Manchester Orchestra is not a band in need of self identification, as they know clearly who they are.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
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