He has a Coloring Book moment with “The Maze”, a gospel-powered tribute to his daughter Mayzie that would be unbearably cloying were it about literally anything else. One might think exposure to that much real and cinematic flatulence might lighten Hull’s mood a little.
Hull’s been given some serious source material, namely the birth of his daughter and co-writing the mostly a cappella soundtrack for the farcical body comedy Swiss Army Man. The result is Manchester Orchestra’s most confounding, thrilling, and unintentionally loopy album yet.
So, no surprise that the narrative concepts, the production, and arrangements of A Black Mile to the Surface are the most grandiose of his career. But while his extreme emoting has remained in the new decade, Simple Math and Cope dulled its impact with plodding, nuance-free nu-grunge, lowering the bar to something closer to, say, a more meaningful Silversun Pickups. As a prolific, teenaged old soul in the gilded age of MySpace emo, he wanted to be Conor Oberst, Sufjan Stevens, and Jeff Mangum at the same time, finding no personal, religious, sexual, or societal crisis too melodramatic to face head on. If this sounds familiar, it’s because he promised pretty much the same thing three years ago on Cope.
Manchester Orchestra frontman Andy Hull promised a scaled down version of his band on A Black Mile to the Surface, a course correction after the overproduced thud of their previous album.
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