Posts Tagged ‘A Black Mile to the Surface’

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA – ” A Black Mile to the Surface “

Posted: January 15, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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They may hail from Atlanta, Georgia, but Manchester Orchestra’s British indie rock influences — certainly not limited to their band name — spill out all over their fifth full-length album. Their sound doesn’t derive from the airtight punk influences of decades past; rather, there’s an anthemic, widescreen feel to nearly every song on A Black Mile to the Surface.

Over a decade on from their debut, Manchester Orchestra still easily strike the fear of God into their listeners. The Andy Hull-led project has never been about quiet devastation – it’s about the extremities of the emotional spectrum and the internal conflicts that come with going there. “The Gold” immediately asserted itself as a career-best track for the band in the lead-up to the release of A Black Mile to the Surface. Indeed, as excellent as that record was, it never quite scaled the same heights elsewhere on its tracklisting. Heavenly harmonies, heart-on-sleeve lyrics and strikingly-beautiful arrangements: “The Gold,”

“The Gold” tumbles along with an intricate, syncopated beat, occasionally stopping dead in its tracks as Hull emotes the hook: “I believed you were crazy / You believe that you loved me.” Elsewhere a dark, almost apocalyptic feel invades songs like “The Moth”, where the intertwining guitar and drums loom over the vocals, creating an urgent texture. “There’s a way out / There’s a way in,” Hull repeats insistently.

Manchester Orchestra — singer/songwriter/guitarist Andy Hull, lead guitarist Robert McDowell, bassist Andy Prince, and drummer Tim Very — bring a great deal of skill and vitality to their rock formula.

The band occasionally dials down the dramatics in favor of more low-key arrangements, such as on “The Alien”, where the heavy surrealism of the lyrics is paired up with indie folk tropes like muted drums and a heavy acoustic vibe. The song wraps up with a dream-like coda that somehow evokes the hypnotic harmonies of Elliott Smith. Clearly, Manchester Orchestra have their influences cut out for them. “The Part”, one of the album’s eloquent highlights, is all heavily reverberated vocals accompanied by stark acoustic guitar. The song’s chorus (“I still want to know each part of you”) is simple and unadorned but underscores the deep level of emotion the band is working with.

A Black Mile to the Surface may get knocked for being a downer, an almost self-conscious one. But for all the melodrama, there’s plenty of smart arrangements and well-crafted musical ideas released on July 29th, 2017 through Loma Vista Recordings

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA – ” A Black Mile to the Surface “

Posted: January 1, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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It’s just as well then that while A Black Mile to the Surface certainly feels like one of the band’s most expansive, and ultimately uplifting, records, it still harbours the undercurrent of darkness and unease that’s an inherent part of Manchester Orchestra. And with tracks like “The Sunshine” blossoming with an understated optimism, the record’s afforded an emotional balance unseen on previous albums, suggesting a further evolution for a band who refuse to rest on their laurels.

Such is their inability to settle in to a groove, that A Black Mile to the Surface is the product of the band’s writing and recording process being turned completely on its head, purposefully pushing themselves to second guess each decision in a bid to create “an album in a ‘non-Manchester’ way”. As a result, the record feels far more cinematic than anything they’ve released before; the influence of singer/guitarist Andy Hull and co-writer/multi-instrumentalist Robert McDowell’s work on 2016 Sundance film Swiss Army Man evident in the hypnotic ebb and flow of “The Mistake”, or in the finger-picked throb of “The Moth”.

Such a grandiose aesthetic is helped here through the production efforts of John Congleton (Explosions In the Sky) and Catherine Marks (The Killers); the two establishing an equilibrium between the elaborate soundscapes of the former, and the bombast of the latter. Rather than fall in to self-indulgence however, A Black Mile to the Surface feels richly nuanced, offering up something new on every repeat listen.

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And you will want to play it again. Probably as soon as you’ve heard it the first time. From the emotive resplendence of opening track “The Maze”, a subtly building opener that gently coaxes listeners in, to the tribal thump of the seven-minute epic “The Silence” that plays the record out, every aspect of A Black Mile to the Surface is ambitious and rarely, if ever, does it falter. And though they’ve certainly succeeded in their goal of making an album in a ‘non-Manchester’ way, it fits perfectly in their Manchester Orchestra canon as a stunning evolution of a band who aren’t afraid to test themselves.