Year in Rock 2011 Nominee: Manchester Orchestra

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA
Virgin

From: Simple Math
Released: May 10

How do you follow up record as emotionally raw and sonically bombastic as Mean Everything to Nothing, an album that was so relentless in its execution that I named it the best of 2009?  Well, it appears as though you make it bigger.  Simple Math, Manchester Orchestra's third album (and first as a band no longer flying under the radar), saw the songs grow wider in scope, the lyrics reach further into life's tough questions, and the band finally making with half of their namesake in the form of rich orchestral flourishes that hang over nearly every song like thick, black clouds.


Of course, the question is whether or not adding all these elements to the equation adds to the overall result.  Weirdly, it doesn't; sometimes, the songs tend to crumble under their own sheer weight.  There are a handful of tracks that certainly don't need to be as ambitious as they are, and they'd have suffered less with a more basic approach.  However, that's not to say the songs themselves are bad; the writing is every bit as strong as on Mean Everything.  It's just that a track like Pensacola, while a technically solid song, doesn't need a soaring string section when simply kicking the guitars up to 11 would have driven the point home a little more effectively.  It's on instances like this that the band's ambition gets in the way of a great song.  It's not overwhelming throughout, though, and Simple Math still turns out to be a fine record.  Especially when the orchestration works.

Nowhere on the album does it work more brilliantly than on Virgin.  Starting out as a sparse dirge before exploding into a hail of noise, the track builds in intensity until it's burning so bright the horn section, strings and children's choir don't feel pretentious; they feel absolutely necessary.  If they'd used the additional instrumentation a little more sparingly, and stuck to the basics for more than a handful of tracks (April Fool is another easy highlight of this record because they do just that), Simple Math would have been a runaway favourite for best album of 2011 instead of merely a contender.