Manchester Orchestra is definitely on to something.
It’s hard to tell, though, if even the band knows what that something is.
The band’s newest album, Mean Everything to Nothing, is relentlessly uneven. The inconsistencies in quality occur both between halves of the album and within individual songs and range from iffy moments to bits of near transcendence.
Many of these issues are contingent on the voice of Andy Hull, who has cultivated a fondness for lifting his vocals into an anguished yell, a trait hinted at on the band’s previous full-length, I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child.
When his voice crept to a snarl on those songs, it was a rare occurrence and resonated because of it. On Mean Everything to Nothing, it becomes tiresome and almost gimmicky, screaming for the sake of being loud and not adding any emotional weight to the lyrics or music.
But when Hull keeps his own intensity at bay and just sings, the result is often gorgeous. His voice is unique – a saccharine vocal delivery counteracted by a bit of underlying fire.
“Shake It Out” is urgent from the get-go, with Hull’s quick delivery skimming along a flood of power chords. The chorus, when it comes, sees the singer screaming the song’s title with a handful of other Hulls backing him up.
And then it becomes quiet. Everything cuts out except for a guitar and the singer. The song becomes spare for a brief moment, and the music begins to function the way it should. When the band rejoins Hull in a crushing interlude, he doesn’t scream but, instead, lets the band mine the emotion for him.
That interlude, though regrettably bookended by cold screaming fits, is Manchester Orchestra at its best: powerful music fitted with a suitable, similarly powerful voice.
Problems arise when the band dashes ahead at full steam, forgetting to step back and carefully assess how best to create the song at hand.
It happens on the overly long and spotty “You, My Pride & Me,” which is entirely too reliant on its main riff and Hull’s constant scream. It happens on “I’ve Got Friends,” a song with a solid pop backbone that isn’t content with its simple verse-chorus structure. It goes rogue and loses clarity.
It happens on “100 Dollars,” a short song that starts so beautifully, tenderly pairing Hull with a female vocalist, before ramping up the volume and distortion and allowing Hull to yell the rest of the lyrics. At this point, six songs into the album, the yelling and screaming is already getting tedious, and the sudden loud outbursts of instrumentation don’t help matters.
Thankfully, much of the potential the band shows on “Shake It Out” manifests itself on the back half of the record.
It begins with “I Can Feel a Hot One,” the only song on Mean Everything to Nothing from last year’s Let My Pride Be What’s Left Behind EP. All the blaring vocals and guitars and general ruckus are abandoned, and Hull once again shines.
From then on out, all the disparate pieces begin to fit together. The piano, which felt like an afterthought at best on the earlier half of the album, begins to complement the songs wonderfully. Hull never overreaches vocally, and when the growl makes its way into the mix, it’s subdued and finally feels organic.
The lyrics on Mean Everything to Nothing are a bit removed from the more affecting ones on the band’s previous record, but welcome bits of continuity begin to show themselves in the second half of the disc.
The album title shows up in a lyric of two separate songs, which forms a nice connect, and the soaring finale, “The River,” contains an unarguable lyrical reference to “Now That You’re Home” from I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child.
Manchester has, without a doubt, expanded on previous output on Mean Everything to Nothing. The thing is, it has expanded in every direction, trying to leave no stone unturned. Cohesiveness is hard to come by as a result, and for every moment of bliss, there’s another of unfounded, raucous noise.
Both ends of the spectrum are represented in full, and the band isn’t sure how exactly to consistently find that hallowed middle ground where it succeeds so absolutely.
In fact, one of the best songs on the album is the hidden track after the finale, an eerie, gripping and simple acoustic number.
If the band takes a skeleton like this and builds from it, periodically stepping back and making sure the growing loudness isn’t unfounded or unnecessary, maybe then Manchester Orchestra will finally achieve the magnificent power it strives for.
jwolper@umd.edu
RATING: 3.5 out of 5 stars