And that’s ultimately what the band’s album is all about. “Especially during Covid times where we are existing in a bubble, we are very happy to love each other and be around each other,” he says. In fact, the opposite can be true - and is with Manchester Orchestra. And if you don’t, then what’s the point?” In other words, a simple, uplifting message of redemption - and a cathartic understanding that loss need not lead to hopelessness. “There’s a lot of self-acceptance and getting rid of some weird unnecessary guilt. What did you do? Were you spending the whole time trying to impress people by what your outer image was or how you were perceived? Or were you working on what is underneath and can’t be washed off?” Andy’s lyrics on stand-out track “Angel of Death” punctuate that point. Ultimately, says Andy, the album’s protagonist challenges us, “Alright, you finished the race. I can pinpoint every time that I heard a specific song that dropped my jaw.” He gives me the unexpected example of Icelandic poster child Bjork and her song “It’s Not Up To You.” “It was like God talked to me.” Music is “a relic that you can study and understand what was happening at that moment. “What I do is a kind of a time stamp,” says Andy. We talked about permanence in a context that most definitely is not - how music offers a safe, timeless place to go to breathe life into memories of our loved ones and extend their legacies. “That’s the exciting thing to know: that however many hundreds or thousands of people hear a song, it can mean anything to anyone and it’s just healing to them,” says Robert. Rather, we explored the power of songs on audiences, and how lyrics hold infinite meanings. Of things getting in the way.”īut our conversation focused not so much about their own inspirations. “I really liked the idea that as you get older, understanding that God is in everything everywhere instead of being so angry that you aren’t talking to him face to face. “I was really struck by the poem’s phrasing,” Andy tells me. The album’s title comes from a poem that Andy stumbled upon and immediately resonated with both, but for very different reasons. Even Andy’s 5-year-old daughter finds her voice on the album to underscore early innocence in the midst of songs that range from birth to the afterlife. I spoke with Robert and lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Andy Hull yesterday to explore these themes, just after the news of Watts broke. I played it on endless shuffle as I drove to and from the hospice.
And what got me through her final weeks - what resonated with me on a deeply personal level - is that album. Consider the album the band’s eulogy to him (processing “a weight on my shoulder” he tells me), one that especially moved me because I too recently lost a parent to cancer - my mother Eva. Love and loss permeate it, precisely because lead guitarist Robert McDowell’s father lost his six-year battle to cancer as the band recorded it. Indie band Manchester Orchestra’s brilliant, and frequently sublime, latest album “The Million Masks of God” (their sixth) captures all of this.
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