REVIEW: Manchester Orchestra - A Black Mile to the Surface (2017)

Just is a review of Manchester Orchestra's new album, A Black Mile to the Surface. I'm still learning Steemit and the way everything works, so please bare with me through all the coding and other issues that will certainly arise.

Manchester Orchestra – A Black Mile to the Surface

July 28th, 2017
1.The Maze
2.The Gold
3.The Moth
4.Lead, SD
5.The Alien
6.The Sunshine
7.The Grocery
8.The Wolf
9.The Mistake
10.The Parts
11.The Silence

Since 2007, Manchester Orchestra has been releasing music that pushes the limits of the indie rock scene and giving fans shows that few other bands can match in energy and emotion. The Atlanta-based outfit is fronted by Andy Hull, the son of a preacher, who decided at a young age that making music was what he wanted to do with his life. At seventeen years old, he was recording albums and EPs with the band and touring heavily. He stopped going to public school and put himself through homeschool in order to focus on his projects and it certainly paid off for him when he was nineteen and signing a record deal with one of the biggest labels in the industry.

I slept on this band for a long time, until 2011 when some friends asked me to go to one of their shows in Orlando and I was just down to go to any shows at that point (plus The Dear Hunter was opening). I’m damn sure glad I went because these guys are now at the top of my list when it comes to shows I’ve seen and albums I love. Two out of the three times I got to see them play, it was almost a spiritual experience, which sounds dumb but they put so much into their live performance that it fills the whole atmosphere of the venue with an intensity and emotion that’s hard to describe.

It’s been well over three years since 2014’s COPE (and the later acoustic version, HOPE) and the band has finally put out their newest record, A Black Mile to the Surface. This record has certainly been a long time comin’. Rumors have been swirling around for well over a year now. When I first heard about it, the story was that the band was writing something of a concept album, following the tales of a single family in a single town for a long period of time. This was long before the album was announced or even teased. The idea of such an album got me very excited because it was reminiscent of Faulkner’s work with the Compson family. COPE and HOPE weren’t what I was hoping for out of Manchester, so let’s see if they can bring back my excitement and live up to what I hope this album will be.

1. “The Maze” / 2. “The Gold”

These two tracks do a wonderful job at setting up what this album will be for the rest of your first listen. “The Maze” is slow, pretty and soulful in the way that Andy Hull excels at. My favorite Manchester songs have always been the slow ones that still had the intensity to them; “Colly Strings,” “Where Have You Been,” the like. Then there are those stand-out tracks like this one, “After the Scripture” and “Sleeper 1972” that manage to be just plain slow but still be pretty and interesting. This track being put at the start of the album gave me hope that I’d get more of the classic feel that I love from the band. After that, “The Gold,” the first single that was released, gives listeners a good mixture of what their sound has been and what it has become. It mixes Andy’s vocal style from COPE with the harmonies and instrumentation that we expect from Manchester. “The Gold” also shows that Andy hasn’t lost his lyric-writing chops when it comes to those emotion lines. “You and me, we’re a daydream, so lose your faith in me.”

3. “The Moth”

Always ones to push the envelope with some of their music, Manchester Orchestra does that a good amount throughout the album. “The Moth” is just the first example. We hear elements of all of their music here but the chord progression and melody are very strange to my ears. Not bad, I think this could actually become one of my favorite songs on the album, but definitely weird. The way the keyboard is used in this track is, I think, what makes it so strange, especially with the harmonies and other instrumentation. This was another single that was released before the album and, upon first hearing it, I really disliked it but now that I’ve heard it a few times with the full album, I think it fits wonderfully into the full piece.

4. “Lead, SD” / 5. “The Alien”

Track four and five flow really well into one another and are both also very unique to the rest of the album and the whole of Manchester’s catalog. The intro to “Lead, SD” sounds like a strange interlude at first but then the first verse sounds like exactly what I want and expect from the band. It gets stranger from there but is still catchy and pleasant to listen to, for the most part. There is a section where Andy’s singing and the instruments are all doing something different at the same time and it gets a little off-putting but doesn’t last too long. “The Alien” was another single released prior to the album’s drop date and this one made me really nervous for the album, even more so than “The Moth.” Again, though, hearing it in the middle of the album amongst the story and feel of the thing as a whole has me satisfied. This band has a knack for putting together well thought-out albums. Here, if the fact that this album is a story wasn’t already obvious, it definitely should be now. The lyrics deal with some quite intense and sad themes while the music is a bit bland and boring. It works, though, to get across the story and we do still get a fairly groovy section toward the end that makes up for it.

6. “The Sunshine” / 7. “The Grocery”

I’m going to go through these two pretty quickly; not because they’re bad but because they’re not standouts compared to the rest of the album. “The Sunshine” has an amazing grooviness to it that I love but the song itself is fairly short and repetitive. It’s pretty and catchy but not very substantive. “The Grocery,” on the other hand, is very substantive and portrays a ton of emotion and gives listeners a bit more of the story. It’s sad and desperate and right up my alley and, from what I can tell, the alley of most Manchester fans. This will be one of the deep cuts that people end up loving, but upon first listen, I don’t think it stands out above other tracks.

8. “The Wolf” / 9. “The Mistake"

Track eight, “The Wolf,” is sure to be one of the fan-favorite songs at shows. This is the type of songs that give them their power when they preform them. Well, their talent and love for their music does that, but every time I’ve seen them, there have been songs that stood out and got the whole crowd moving and screaming. “The Wolf” has the dark and emotive instrumentation, the powerful lyrics and vocal melodies and the beautifully intense break toward the end that we all love to hear and watch performed live. “The Mistake” is a beautiful song, there’s no way around it or other way to say it. It’s straightforward, the melodies are all pretty and easy to listen to in the way that a lot of their 2011 album Simple Math was.

10. “The Parts” / 11. “The Silence”

Now we’ve come to what are currently my two favorite tracks on the album and also happen to be the last two on A Black Mile to the Surface. “The Parts” is what I was hoping for from a new Manchester Orchestra album and I’m very happy I got it. My favorite track on COPE was the b-side “After the Scripture” and that’s what this one reminds me of. I’ve always personally felt that Andy’s slow acoustic songs are his best. Finally, from when I saw the track title “The Silence” I knew it was going to be haunting and intense and I couldn’t wait to get to the end of the album to hear it. I was not disappointed and I don’t think many other people will be, either. It starts out slow and builds on itself throughout the whole track until you hear the line “There is nothing you keep, there is only a reflection” in an instrument break and then everything kicks back in and it’s “Colly Strings” all over again.

Conclusion

And there we have it, Machester Orchestra’s A Black Mile to the Surface. I have to say, before the album came out, I was very worried that it was going to be another COPE and I was just not going to be able to get into it, even if the story was as good as it sounded. I’m happy to report, though, that I really enjoyed every listen I’ve had so far. Even the tracks that I don’t think stand out that well are pretty and tell parts of the story and the tracks that do stand out are phenomenal for the most part. “The Alien” is still a little odd to me but the band has done weirder stuff in the past. From what I can tell, the fanbase is loving it and I’m really glad to hear that.

I don’t think this album stands up to their first three but I think it’s a definite improvement over COE. I know some people really love that record and there are some good tracks but it just kind of bored me after the first listen or two. I’ve learned recently, though, that is’ very hard for new music to hit you in the way that albums did when you were a teenager, especially as the bands you listen to get older and more mature along with you. There are exceptions, of course, but many of my favorite bands from high school either no longer make music or no longer make music that I enjoy. That’s just the way it is, I guess.

Hope you enjoyed the review. I’m going to have a piece on the vinyl coming up shortly so stayed tuned for that. I also am hoping to get a review of the album up on YouTube by the end of the weekend, so we’ll see how that goes.