In 2009, I named Manchester Orchestra’s second album, Mean Everything To Nothing, my favorite album of the year. (If this line seems familiar, it’s because it is. I wrote something similar about the White Lies one month ago.)
No surprise, then, that as I tore open a copy of ManO’s follow-up, Simple Math, I felt like a sailor returning to his favorite port. I was prepared to listen to the album a dozen times, soaking up the crashing guitars and tender lyrics for which the Orchestra is known in the music library in my brain.
There was only one problem: I’ve met Andy Hull, Manchester Orchestra’s lead singer.
Our meeting happened after a Manchester Orchestra show in Kansas City. Hull and I had exchanged Twitter messages after his exuberant response to my 2009 list (I’d quote it but I have no idea how to look that far back in a Twitter feed) and Hull brought me backstage to meet the band.
Andy Hull is passionate in the way that lead singers often are. He’s also a sympathetic figure, in the way that lead singers also often are. The son of a Georgia preacher, he seemed older than his (at the time) 23 years. His intelligence, combined with a laissez-faire attitude toward shaving and a, shall we say, beer-influenced physique and I thought he had to be 30.
I fell under Hull’s spell, like anyone would, and liked him immediately. And that’s the problem. Before I even listened to Manchester Orchestra’s new album, I wanted to say it was good, but I wanted to say that for reasons other than the album’s goodness or badness.
It was with all this in mind that, back in February, I popped Simple Math into the CD player in my Volkswagen and went for a drive.
I noticed first that everything was a little quieter, a little softer. This left me vexed; it reflected a fear about Manchester Orchestra I’d been nursing since my exposure to Hull’s side projects (Right Away Great Captain, Bad Books) in which the tack is toward slower, mellower music. And while my skin might sometimes be Simon & Garfunkel, my heart is Led Zeppelin. I need more rawk bands in my life, not fewer.
I tossed Simple Math aside. (Behind, actually, into a back hatch filled with last summer’s beach towel/kickball/baseball glove menagerie.) I went back to listening to the new Dropkick Murphys album. But then, like a jilted lover, I returned.
What I found is this:
Some of my first impressions were correct. Simple Math IS softer and quieter than Mean Everything To Nothing. But as I’ve played, over and over, the ten songs (bravo on keeping it short, men) that make up Simple Math, I’ve noticed something that I like very much: it feels like the band might explode out of my speakers at any moment. They never really do, but the determination of the band and Hull to tell a story in a particular way is evident. The guitars are neither as anthemic nor as omnipresent as on Mean Everything To Nothing, but the result is no less intense. It dawned on me that this intensity – more than the heavy guitar – is what I like most about Manchester Orchestra.
In interviews about Simple Math, Andy Hull says that parts of the album describe the rockiest times in his young marriage. What the album is about to Andy Hull is not important. Or rather, it’s not important to you and me. As I’ve listened for these last few months, I haven’t felt like a voyeur peering into the Hull kitchen. I have, however, felt like a voyeur peering into the Hull brain. I’ve learned, by listening to Simple Math, how Andy Hull feels, and that has allowed me to think about how I feel. On Simple Math, Manchester Orchestra has done what good artists should do: they’ve allowed me to bring my own experiences to the band’s music.
None of this, though, settles the major question at hand, which is this: why should you believe anything I say about Manchester Orchestra? Why should you accept at face value my judgment that Simple Math, while not quiiiiiiite as good as Mean Everything To Nothing, is still far better than it has any right to be, and that the reason for its near-permanent residence inside my car’s CD player is its quality and not my affection for Andy Hull? Why should you think I’m not like a BASIC file on a 5 1/2” floppy, long since corrupted and useless to you?
You should trust me because I solved the problem early on, sometime after that first listen – the one that left me feeling so ambivalent. I resolved then that, if I didn’t like Simple Math, I wouldn’t write about it.
Manchester Orchestra’s album, Simple Math, is out now on iTunes and at Amazon.com.
Masthead artwork by Scott Shaffer.
For more from Paul, click some of the fun buttons below…
Past work on FlipCollective.com.
To follow him on Twitter.
To befriend him on Facebook.
Related Posts
I recently spent two weeks in Spain promoting the translation of my book, Can I Keep My Jersey? (Me Puedo Quedar La Camiseta?, thanks for asking.) On the trip, I shook hands, I signed copies of the book and I did interviews for newspapers and radio stations. I did all of those things, mostly, in Spanish. I speak Spanish with the same level ...
It used to be simple. You got the girl’s number, you called her, you hoped you’d get her voicemail, you waited for her to call back, you made a plan to get Italian. But now? Now, nobody uses the telephone for the “phone” part. So, unless the girl is not a girl at all – i.e. over 40 – you’re going to need to send a text message. ...
You are probably aware that there used to be a 17-year-old in Florida named Trayvon Martin and that there is no longer a 17-year-old in Florida named Trayvon Martin. You are probably also aware that many people – athletes and celebrities and politicians alike – have come out in condemnation of the circumstances surrounding Trayvon Martin’s...
When I was 18, I left my tiny Kansas hometown to play basketball at Iowa State University. During my college career, I cared so much about basketball that I was willing to put up with screaming coaches, early-morning practices, and the complete absence of any social life. I worried more than most CEOs. I slept less than most workaholics. To combat ...
Imagine this scenario, if you will: I’m standing in a room. I don’t know how I got into this room. There is another man in this room with me. The man tells me that if I stay in this room with him for the next 24 hours, if I follow his orders, if I put my absolute trust in his guidance, and if I tell him I like his haircut once every...
Comments