I’ll start by saying that I’ve been
waiting 3 years for a new Manchester Orchestra release. It was well worth the wait. Andy Hull and company are back for the
most rocking album they’ve released since 2007, potentially more rocking than
anything they’ve put out.
In
the last three years Manchester Orchestra has been busy. Acting as the backup band for The Dear
Hunter’s color spectrum on “Red”, converting an Atlanta, GA house into their
recording studio and demoing out 28 songs before narrowing down the choices to the
ones that made the cut for their forthcoming album “Cope”.
The
album is full on rock and roll, and is so much heavier than “Simple Math” that
it is like they are bypassing its existence and working towards another
“Everything to Nothing”. The
instrumentals sound incredibly polished and heavier than ever, in addition to
upping the production value on the vocals, they went all out on their record,
and knowing that they recorded it themselves makes it all the more pleasing to
hear something so well engineered.
The
songs run the gamut from minor to major and move seamlessly between dirty and
downtrodden to gritty yet uplifting.
As always, Hull’s vocals are spot on, even when he is harmonizing high
above his normal register. His
lyrics are just as full of depth as they have ever been, however he seems to
concentrate more on one particular theme than he has in the past. Hull had this to say at a press
release, “Cope, to me, means getting by. It means letting go, and being OK
with being OK. You can cope in a positive way when bad things happen, or a
negative way, and that blend was a big lyrical theme for me on this album.” He also goes on to reflect on the idea
of the colors red and black being the thematic colors for not only the album
cover but for the tone of the record as well.
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