Manchester Orchestra- Mean Everything To Nothing
by Micah Wimmer on April 29th, 2009
Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything to Nothing
April 21st, 2009
Favorite Gentlemen Records
Score: 7.6
I enjoy reading about a band’s influences. Part of the fun for me is looking for new music to listen to and another part is my hope that if I listen to enough of a great band’s influences, that something will click within me, and I’ll suddenly become a great songwriter like Bob Dylan or Neil Young. It’s also interesting to see if you can trace a band’s influences just by listening, or if they enjoy listening and haven’t really let their influences seep into the music. I recently read that 3OH!3 loves Neutral Milk Hotel, Robert Johnson, and Joanna Newsom. Needless to say, I’m a bit skeptical about this, but they would definitely fall into the latter category if their claimed hipness is indeed true. Manchester Orchestra’s new record Mean Everything to Nothing is all but ashamed of its influences, primarily Nirvana and Weezer.
This record begins much like its predecessor, with a high octane opener, but unlike their debut, this doesn’t let up until track seven as opposed to track three. It’s apparent from the second track onward that Manchester Orchestra is much more concerned with making a fully cohesive album than before. There is no breathing room until the seventh track, album highlight ‘I Can Feel a Hot One’. The first six tracks show a much more intense band, both musically and emotionally. Its sound has been fleshed out by bringing keyboardist Chris Freeman into a more prominent role, and the production seems to make the sound fuller as a whole.
Vocalist/lyricist Andy Hull has also moved away from the softer, composed style he utilized on tracks such as ‘I Can Feel Your Pain’ and has began using a mixture of yelling and singing that is not wholly original, but is employed very well. It elevates a track like ‘Shake It Out’ from simply being solid but forgettable to memorable and passionate. This vocal intensity is a key ingredient throughout the record adding texture to songs and credibility to every word that Hull delivers. As the old adage goes: it’s not what you say, but how you say it, and Hull is saying it well.
What Hull says, though, is often not as meaningful as his delivery would make you believe. Many of the lyrics try to convey a certain level of meaning that is not there. The title phrase “mean everything to nothing” is sung and yelled repeatedly towards the end of the record as if the existence of this band depends on it and it is the most important phrase they’ve ever uttered when it is really simply a bit of a cliche and unimaginative statement. ‘I Can Feel a Hot One’ is sung with great sincerity, but what exactly Hull is so passionate about is anyone’s guess.
As previously mentioned, the first seven tracks are great, but the album sputters a bit from there. While the album has no bad tracks per se, the four tracks that remain seem overlong at times and don’t match the lyrical or musical intensity of those that preceded them with the exception of the hidden track, but you have to listen to over five minutes of ‘The River’ and then a lot of silence to get to it.
Andy Hull has repeatedly namedropped the band’s main influences while promoting this album, and they clearly show up on this record. There are songs poppy as circa 1994 Weezer, and others as dark as Pinkerton-era songs. When I first heard the beginning of chords to ‘In My Teeth’, I literally thought I was hearing a Nirvana cover. Their open acknowledgment of their influences leads to inevitable comparisons that does not go in their favor as obviously, this record is no Pinkerton or In Utero. Even so, this is a much more cohesive work that goes together better than their debut. It shows a band growing and if they can make this much progress once again in a few years, then they’ll truly be a force to be reckoned with.
Micah Wimmer
Menomena