Manchester Orchestra

I don't even know why we call these things album reviews.

We only write about shit we like and really don't 'review' anything. We just try to explain why we love a particular album so much. Hopefully you'll then love it it too and the world will be a better place. 

But sometimes that's easier said than done. Sometimes I can't explain why I love something so I'll use a slew of boner metaphors. Sometimes I'll try and explain how an album feels to me and the artist of the album I reviewed will tell me that I hit the nail on the head. Sometimes they'll ask me if I am high because I'm wayyyyy off.

Look, I'm just a man with a perfectly sculpted chin. I can't be right all the time. And in the immortal words of Jeff Tweedy regarding the fan's interpretation of art: if the whole world's singing your songs, And all you're paintings have been hung, Just remember what was yours is everyone's from now on.

That said, Manchester Orchestra's album A Black Mile To The Surface makes me feel a specific way and how I hear it - how ultimately interpret it - may not coincide with your's the bands' interpretation of the album. I could potentially be way off, but I'm not going to write on egg shells. However, I feel if I can get the same emotions coursing through you veins, whether right or wrong, ABMTTS will bring you the same joy it brings to me.
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First, after digging up some interviews and articles about this album I'm not sure anybody knows exactly what the album is about. Not even Manchester Orchestra.

What I do know for sure is that the album's 'story' centers around Lead, SD, a town the band has passed through on past tours. Lead, SD is the home of a gold mine that closed in 2002; many workers lost their jobs and as a result many have left the town. Recently, scientists discovered that 'The secrets of the universe may lie in this old gold mine' and Lead is now ground zero for the largest U.S.-based particle physics experiment ever.

It doesn't take one with a masters in literature that the album title, A Black Mile To The Surface and the song titles like 'The Gold' and 'Lead, SD' are.....well, about the gold mine in Lead South Dakota. 

The second reason I may be way off in my interpretation is because recent events have made ABMTTS feel more relevant to me. Even events that happened after the album was released. When ABMTTS came out in August I was immediately hooked. I didn't initially write about it because I just didn't know what to say. I listened to the shit out of it for a couple of weeks and like most albums I love...they kinda faded away. BUT the album found a way back into my life. 

And it's no secret that a lot of shit has happened in the world since then:

Manufacturing jobs are still being lost. 

There's been the on-going opioid epidemic.

There is the general political climate. Every single topic seems so divisive; people are angry and frustrated with other people who have opposing views. But nobody ever takes the time to understand why we disagree with each other. 

On a more personal note, my SYFFAL BFF Joel had a friend commit suicide. It's the fourth person in his life to take their own life. Needless to say he was hurting....again. But Joel is a special kind of bro, while he's loud and abrasive he also has a huge heart and is kind to everybody. He also insists on talking about an epidemic that is not comfortable to talk about. As an alderman for his city, he authored a proclamation for suicide awareness. The proclamation was adopted by other cities and started to spread to more cities. This along with the suicides of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, I learned more about how people hurt internally and they don't show any signs of depression.

Then there was the Las Vegas shooting and the unknown motives of the shooter, which made feel a little dirty for loving the 7th song on this album called 'The Grocery'. (I'll get into this later)

Finally, I read this article that just seemed to tie everything together. The article focuses on how many men are chronically lonely, which leads to depression and acts of aggression. And while the article is mainly about mass shootings it covers suicide too.

With that article fresh in my head and while listening to ABMTTS in the shower yesterday it clicked. This album sure as fuck feels a snapshot of America right now. Or at least that is how it feels to me. 

America.

No it's not the 'advertised America', John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen or Neil Diamond are singing about. It's the hidden America we don't want to talk about. The shit we sweep under the rug. Sure there is still beauty and love in this America, but there is also loneliness, regret and tension.  Manchester Orchestra touches upon ALL of these feelings; the good feelings people overcompensate for on their Facebook pages and the feelings they keep hidden so they aren't seen as vulnerable or weak. This is why the album feels so real to me. This is why it feels so relevant. And as the album art insinuates, featuring a dead body hanging from the top of a mutilated tree....it's not 'light listening'. 
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ABMTTS is constructed like how an album is supposed to be, with continuity and not a patch work of songs. But after about a hundred listens I'm pretty confident it doesn't have a linear story per se. ABMTTS is more like a Quentin Tarantino film, a couple different stories that jump around the album yet ultimately tie together. Some parts also feel fictional while other parts feel personal; Manchester Orchestra goes in and out of these realms of fiction/points of view making it all feel like a strange vivid dream. In the end, trying to decipher all of this won't matter. 

I think the main message is that we want people to truly understand us, but we only want to give them the glimpses into our personality we aren't ashamed of. We expect them to put together a puzzle with missing pieces and for some reason feel defeated when they can't. It's an underlying theme that's written all over these songs.

That's why the tracks I've read to be about fatherhood is where the true joy on this album come from; the unspeakable love children give to their parents is so much easier to accept because you can't set these expectations on them. We don't give them a puzzle and expect them to figure us out. They don't need a reason to love us; they just do. On the 'The Maze' Andy Hull, a new father himself, sings: 

Somebody said it's unspeakable love 
it's amazing 
you lift that burden off of me. 

And on 'The Sunshine' it seems that he wants to be sure, that in return, he's not placing that burden on his son:

I already know that I don't already know
You are the sunlight
I don't really care if you don't understand
You are the moonlight
And that's alright, alright with me

Yet, the impression I get of Lead, SD is that it is is a sad place; just like other former mining towns with closed down mines there's little opportunity. Generations of men will most likely not exceed the successes of their fathers giving them suppressed feelings of failure or resentment. In 'The Gold' Hulls paints the picture:

I don't wanna bark here anymore
Black hills, the colly
Wasn't really dangerous for us
We just catch you coughing
What the hell are we gonna do?
A black mile to the surface
I don't wanna be here anymore
It all tastes like poison

The hugest moment on this album (and maybe the best moment on any album this year) covers three tracks that are all in the same key and meld into each other.

Track 5 is called 'The Alien', it is about a character who self-medicates and goes on a road trip to contemplate suicide while he's haunted by childhood memories of being bullied by kids who called him an Alien.

Track 6 is 'The Sunshine', a beautiful track that almost acts a the calm before the storm. 

And Track 7, 'The Grocery' is the top being blown off the powder keg. I'm left wondering if the same character in 'The Alien' is the one who shoots up a grocery store and eventually kills himself on this track. The character seems convinced this is his only way out. Is it the same tortured person we hear about in other songs? The same person who can't live up to the success of his father? The same boy who was called an Alien in grade school? The same self-destructive person who ruins his relationships? The humanization of this sick individual that is committing an inhumane act makes me feel so uncomfortable I get ill. It scares me because he could be any of these people. And while 'The Grocery' is in the middle of the album, it seems like a culmination of everything. 

As dark and sad as the album can be, there is an abundance of emotion on every single track. The hugeness of the production almost feels spiritual like we are observing, from above, human nature in it's true form. But the fact that you are still feeling by the end gives you hope that we can save ourselves and save others. It oddly inspires you. Just like Joel's proclamation, I feel like this album is making me more aware with every single listen. It's a wake up call that we need to start understanding each other on a deeper level. And then start helping each other. Maybe the secrets of the universe do lie in this  figurative gold mine, beneath the surface, just itching to get out. 

Now, how 'high' did that sound?