“We never want to divulge too much about what a song is about,” says guitarist Robert McDowell via phone from an Austin tour stop when asked about how the album seemed to anticipate the sorrow that the pandemic would bring. Manchester Orchestra performs at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, March 14, at House of Blues. “Once it’s out in the world, [the music] belongs to anyone to interpret it. It’s been interesting to see how it has worked differently in people’s lives. The ‘masked’ thing was part of the title prior to the pandemic.”
During the making of the album, McDowell’s father, who’d been battling cancer, passed away, and his death impacted the tone of the LP’s tunes.
“We’re a very close intertwined band, and [the album] was something where we could all put those feelings into the work,” says McDowell. “As I get further from it, I don’t know if it was a healthy way or an unhealthy way, but it was a way of processing that. I just kept my head down. There’s a global concept to the songs, but it’s not necessarily following the traditional concept album like the Who’s albums.”
Musically, the band sought to experiment a bit by broadening its sound with the use synths and drum machines, continuing a tradition of exploring new approaches with each release.
“What we always try to do with that is aim for something beyond what you can fully understand at the moment because you know it will unfold and turn it into its own thing,” says McDowell. “We always try to experiment. While we were writing, our drummer Tim [Very] brought this Frankenstein drum kit up, and we have all these electronic drums running through pedals. The wonderful thing about music is that you can have a plan, but you will ultimately react to what you hear. It happens in real time. One bad idea can point you in the direction of a good idea. You have to fail forward and rely on your gut to tell you what to do.”
A song such as “Keel Timing,” which starts with steady synths that escalate into a Beatles-like psychedelic rock rant, suggests the way the band pushes the musical envelop on the album.
“On that one, the way it starts off is part of the Frankenstein drum set,” explains McDowell. “I want to say a lot of that is our Prophet synth. That song was a song that when we finally got the groove in the [Asheville, NC] cabin where we were writing it, it was the most clear where to take it. It was a nightmare to record it. It’s a very precise groove.”
McDowell says the group always buys a few new pieces of gear with the making of every album to avoid simply repeating itself from album to album.
“Over the last few records and on [2017’s] A Black Mile to the Surface and The Million Masks of God, there is more experimenting in that way. We’ve been playing guitar forever. Those are the obvious choices. We can fall back on that. It was trying to step out of the box we had created.”
With its hushed vocals, “The Internet” makes for a spooky way to close the album.
“That was a song that [singer-guitarist] Andy [Hull] had the melody for,” says McDowell. “We were talking about it just last night. It was a very difficult song structurally to get correct just because there are so many ups and downs. It wasn’t until February of 2020 that we got it down. We were in L.A. staying at our producer Ethan Gruska’s house. He had gone to bed. We were sitting at his kitchen table. It was about 2 a.m., and we were chopping it up trying to figure out the right arrangement. We finally figured out that if it’s a slow burn and creeps and opens up at the end, then the outro can come into it. The rest is on the album.”
More than 15 years ago, the band released its first EP, You Brainstorm, I Brainstorm, but Brilliance Needs a Good Editor and then followed it up with I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child, setting the course to become a fiercely independent group.
“They were definitely difficult albums to make,” says McDowell. “There’s a certain element of youth and undeserved confidence [on those albums]. We had a wonderful collaborator named Dan Hannon who helped teach Andy [Hull] and I how to produce a record. He was older and had a larger skill set. He helped us chase the dreams we had in our head. With every album, it’s like you’re sitting there at the door trying to figure out the lock, and you finally figure out the lock, and there’s another door on the other side. Every record gets easier and harder to make. You learn from the last one and then have to learn something new for the next one. We have some stuff sorted out for the next one, and we’re just now planning out how we want to start chipping away at it.”
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 8, 2022.