First Impression: 6
Lyrics: 7
Sound: 7
Flow: 9
Originality: 4
Average: 6.75
Best track(s): Simple Math, Virgin
Worst track(s): Deer
There's something about Manchester Orchestra that I so easily and basically relate to. I loved "I'm like a virgin losing a child" to my very core, until I heard "mean everything to nothing," at which point I realized that I instead loved that second album even more. For a while, they became my favorite band, with all the complexities of their lyrics and the range of their sound.
Simple Math is different, though. It's almost like they took the delicacy and depth of virgin, and tried to mash it with the allusionary brilliance of the lyrics of mean everything, unsuccessfully. Not completely failed though, they seemed to find a nice balance between the two spectrums of sound found on their previous albums.
I, like many I'm sure, have been following the track-by-track updates Manchester has been releasing for this album. When I first heard Simple Math, the track, I was elated. This is It, I thought, This will be such a brilliant, sensual, masterful album that it will knock me over with beauty.
I was wrong.
The first listen to the album in its entirety is boring; there's no other way to describe it. During the second listen you pick up on a couple tracks that stand out as something you would expect from Manchester Orchestra on a good day, but only a couple. It took me five listens to actually like this album. It took me twelve to determine that Manchester Orchestra is testing their limits. They stretch themselves from a track so minimalistic that it would be light even for "Like a Virgin," to a track so out of the ordinary for them that I could never have guessed was made by the band if it wasn't in their album. I interpret Simple Math as 44 and a half minutes of Andy Hull doing whatever the fuck he wants to do in a studio setting, and more power to him, for creating something more successful and powerful than most other artists today, even though it doesn't fully live up to the potential of Manchester Orchestra
Don't get me wrong. This album is good, it's just not the phenomenal masterpiece I expected. Half the tracks are excellent. Four of the tracks are good, and only one track isn't up to par, but only because of how out of place it sounds. It evermore lends to the notion that Manchester Orchestra deserves to be bigger than they are (even though that would break my hipster heart).
