Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything To Nothing
Now getting the full launch it deserves... a tour de force and and one of the albums of the year.
Atlanta quintet Manchester Orchestra released this album - the follow-up to the 2007 debut 'Like A Virgin Losing A Child' - earlier this year, where despite rave reviews from US indie blogs, it went largely unnoticed in the UK. Now it's getting the full launch it deserves, as 'Mean Everything To Nothing' is a tour de force and and one of the albums of the year.
Frontman Andy Hull is a man who lyrically battles with his conscience and with God, and does so with darkly humourous twist. A paradox of the emotional nakedness of folk music, but laid over the radio-friendly rock found found from the likes of Biffy Clyro. Opener 'The Only One' builds with off-kilter, threatening guitars, and then all the songs bleed into each other. 'Shake It Out' feels like one of the most commercial songs on the album, and as a consequence loses that edge. 'I've Got Friends' is the highlight of their catalogue by a mile. With this album having been written as the then teenage group were gaining plaudits for their debut, it's a biting account of a life changed, done justice by the astonishingly visceral onslaught by Hull's bandmates. Having been recorded virtually live, the track contains every crack of emotion in Hull's voice, and not a drop of rawness has been eradicated in Joe Chiccarelli's sympathetic production.
The doom-laden 'Pride' continues the tremendous theme of wringing out everything they can from a song; the first half of the album has each song convoluted, always finishing with an epic crescendo of hooks and riffs. The Nirvana-like 'In My Teeth' shows off the underlying pop sound that Manchester Orchestra have embraced on their follow-up - it may be more fierce and intense, but so are the tunes.
'I Can Feel A Hot One' takes things more slowly for the latter half of the LP, showing a calmer, more tender side to Hull. From then on Hull seems to be internally resolving the angst, fully released in the brooding 'My Friend Marcus', with the album's title as the huge chorus. 'The River' closes 'Mean Everything To Nothing' on a gentle note, a bluesy meandering number. A complete, consistently brilliant body of work from a band who will continue to perfect the art of astounding.
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