Working on a counter-piece to their newest album ‘Cope’, the boys from Manchester Orchestra are coming to rock Australia at the end of the year.
With a string of east coast tours, Atlanta indie-rockers Manchester Orchestra haven’t let fans down with their latest offering. The raw rock they’ve produced is a progression of their style that’s deeper than they’ve produced before.
Lead guitarist Robert McDowell said their mission statement for the album was for it to be heavy, driven and direct. “I’m sure it’s not as elegant as I’d like it to be, but I’m sure it was something along the lines of ‘a badass, rock record’.”
Evolving from their formation in 2004, Robert says that when they first started playing live, fans weren’t all that interested in watching them. “So we developed a way of playing things louder, harder, faster. “With that we’ve also gotten better and more confident in playing our instruments, so it’s really allowed us to pinpoint exactly the way we want to sound, which for this album at least, it was an aggressive, rock record.”
‘Cope’ is all about trying to steer alternative music back in the direction that Manchester Orchestra think it should be. “I feel like there’s a lot of bands out there that, not knocking their style or anything, but they’ve kind of turned alternative music and alternative rock into something it isn’t.”
Lead singer of the band, Andy Hull, says that the album ‘Cope’ is just that, about coping. “[It] means getting by. It means letting go, and being okay with being okay. You can cope in a positive way when bad things happen, or a negative way, and that blend was a big lyrical theme for me on this album.”
Building their own studio and self-producing the album, Robert says it’s something they’ve always wanted to do. Though the story behind how it came about isn’t pretty, the guys saw opportunity arise so they took it and ran. “We had this space that we had been in for a while and people where getting shot in the complex, so we knew we wanted to get out. We’d always dreamt of building a studio in this house that was about two minutes away from where we all lived… we had to build the walls to make a record. We had no other outlet to record, so we just kind of jumped in the deep end and it was kind of sink or swim.”
With musical inspiration from across a broad range of genres, the band follows their instincts when it comes to the music they produce. “It’s hard to really pinpoint one thing, it’s just the way we group listening to music and how we interpret that and want Manchester to sound,” Robert says.
Proud of the album they’ve produced, the boys are now working on a relaxed version. “We actually... about three hours ago, finished tracking the last song; we’re doing an alternate version of ‘Cope’ called ‘Hope’, which is more chilled out, stripped down, less aggressive version.
“We will be making another record with the songs off of ‘Cope’ interpreted differently, basically the exact opposite of the mission statement. It’s more of a gorgeous, cleaned up, less rock-driven type of record. It’s kind of just a counter piece,” Robert says.
Manchester Orchestra Tour Dates
12th November – The Hi-Fi (Brisbane)13th November – The Corner Hotel (Melbourne)
14th November – The Croner Hotel (Melbourne)
15th November – Metro Theatre (Sydney)
