Stereoboard Speak To Manchester Orchestra About Their UK Tour & New Album 'Simple Math' (Interview)
Monday, 09 May 2011
Written by Matthew Williamson
Hey Manchester Orchestra! So nobody gets confused do you want to say who you are and what you do in the band?
Andy Hull [Lead Vocalist/Guitar]: We can
Go for it!
AH: I’m Andy. I play guitar, and I sing the lead vocals in Manchester Orchestra
Robert McDowell [Backing Vocals/Guitar]: I’m Robert. I play guitar and I sing the lead vocals in Manchester Orchestra
Jonathan Corley [Bass]: I’m Jay, and I sing the lead vocals in Manchester Orchestra.
Tim Very [Drums]: I’m Tim, I play drums and I sing the lead vocals
So I’m glad we cleared that up. How’s the UK going?
AH: It’s actually the best trip we’ve ever had to the UK. It’s our tenth trip overall and we’ve been having an awesome time.
Even better than supporting Biffy Clyro last year?
AH: Oh, that may be the darkest time of my life. December in the United Kingdom, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the sun goes down at 1:30pm. When you’re sleeping ‘til three it all really stars to feels like you’re in the dark night.
RM: Constant night-time. This time we’re keeping our heads up
AH: And there’s been a lot of sunshine too! Not so much now! [Points at the grey sky out the window]
AH: I don’t know! To me this is actually a pretty good day!
[Robert drops a packet of cigarettes down the back of the sofa]
AH: [to Robert] You’ve just gotta let that go. [Turning back to us] We’ll get it after (Awkward Silence)
RM: I’m Robert and I… [Everyone laughs]
So, the album, 'Simple Math', despite lacking an S on the end…
AH: What do you mean?
I mean that Simple Math may be correct in America, but it should be Simple Maths here.
AH: What do you mean?
TV: Math can’t be simple…
AH: No! Let me. What do you mean?
Well in the States ‘Simple Math’ may be the correct terminology…
AH: For What?
Well for your album name.
AH: But what does my album name mean?
Well what does your album name mean? I’m pretty sure I’m meant to be interviewing you!
AH: I know, but you just told me my album name’s incorrect. Simple Math… So you would just call it Maths? Like, I know that that’s used. Maybe he’s just got a point [Everyone starts talking].
AH: STOP THE PRESSING. STOP THE PRESSING of the UK version. Send an e-mail. [Points to Brad Oldham, the band’s manager] We’re changing it to Simple Maths. I feel like an idiot.
BO: Is it presses or press?
RM: Nice… NICE.
So what do you think of 'Simple Math'?
AH: I love it
RM: Yeah, we’re all very proud of it. We’re not going to put out a record that we’re not more proud of than the last one, and when we rapped this one we definitely all felt good about it.
AH: I think it’s our mission statement of where we wanna go is the minute that we get to feel like we’re hauling it in, writing something for the sake of writing it, then I feel it becomes significantly less important to us than other stuff going on in our lives. We’re still all growing up in a lot of ways. So being, basically, our fourth full length album and this being our tenth time to England and we’ve done, who knows how many US tours, we’ve played over a couple thousand shows, you get to a point where this record had to be important to us, because if it wasn’t important to us there would be no point in us doing it. If it wasn’t the best thing ever we’d all go do something else. Not the best thing ever to everyone, but the best thing that we could possibly create, and we didn’t stop until we got that point.
You say you’ve recorded four albums, only three have been released, so when is 'Nobody Sings Anymore' (the band’s unreleased ‘first’ album) going to be released properly?
AH: That’s a great question. 'Nobody Sings Anymore' is such a cool, weird thing that we’ve lost so much money on. Potentially, when the time’s right. We write a lot of songs, we are constantly working on new material. We wrote about 100 songs for 'Simple Math', not for 'Simple Math' but 27 songs for the idea of 'Simple Math', but I mean songs that I had, that I came up with, and we added a full band, Manchester songs that we record, we had close to a hundred. What did we call it for this one?
RM: Ying Yang
AH: Ying Yang! There were these two sides, there was kind of soft, intimate, folky, Bonnie Prince Billy, Neil Young kind of vibe. Then there was this disgusting…
RM: There was also this kind of disgusting, rock record. There was also more straightforward, kind of like the Virgin song
AH: Yeah, definitely. It was something where we were really productive and it wasn’t until we turned in the record that we were like, “Holy shit.” We took a huge step to make this grand sounding thing. Maybe we’ve made the biggest mistakes of our lives. So that’s kind of the waiting game you play from the time you finish your record to now. The cool thing is that after every album we’ve ever released all of the band members will listen to it for a month and then it tires out. With ['I’m Like A Virgin Loosing A Child'] I remember a certain point of going, “I’m not going to listen to this anymore”. Mean Everything to Nothing was like, “I’m not going to listen to this anymore”. [Jay] made a good point that I wouldn’t even listen to In My Teeth from Mean Everything to Nothing because it was so not what I thought it should sound like. This record is…
RM: Exactly what we wanted it to be.
AH: If the five of us get on a plane individually, without talking to each other about it we will all, at one point, listen to it again. We haven’t stopped listening to it.
The songs on this album seem more relaxed, with less fury. The last two albums seem to have more distortion, more shouting, was that deliberate?
AH: Yeah, absolutely
RM: Yeah, the last record was to prove a point. To kind of give a middle finger.
AH: If you’re a band, and you have to make a second record and that was emotionally, and honestly the second record was like a temper tantrum of sorts. A shouting match. It was not nearly as thought out. It was more just, go for it, and Joe Chiccarelli, who co-produced the record, who we worked with because of the work he did with White Stripes, My Morning Jacket, The Shins, The Raconteur. He’s a dude that doesn’t put up with any of the bullshit, I remember him actually telling me, “We’re not doing a science project here.” Simple Math’s ironic for a lot of reasons because there’s nothing simple at all about the album, and instead of making an album like Mean Everything to Nothing that repeats a lot. A lot of stuff in Mean Everything to Nothing is circular and repetitive. I don’t think there’s one section of this record that repeats, lyrically or musically. We end up with songs that nobody can use as hits but they have ten hooks each. I think as far as chilling out, that was big departure from Jeremiah, he was our drummer before leaving the band. Jeremiah had one drum mode, and it was called ‘caveman’. He admired Len Clark, who played on two tracks on Simple Math, he played on ‘April Fool’ and ‘Virgin’. Len Clark was Jeremiah’s idol as far as a drummer. I’ve never seen anyone play harder than Jeremiah, and the only person I’ve ever seen play harder than Jeremiah was Len. That, at some point, and Jeremiah would be the first to admit as well, hinders your ability to allow your band dynamic to become soft as a full band. Where before we were all at a point where we were writing songs, because of where we were at musically, that were loud, then quiet, and then loud, and then quiet, a lot of times during a song. This allowed us to be a little more laid back. As far as the rage, I think I’m not as angry. I think it’s just as dark, but I also wanted to explore a lot of sonic abilities with the background vocals. Really inspired by Brian Wilson, and we all got really focused on harmony, and how harmony can shift. The Beatles, we can talk about some of the best songs in the world. A good harmony makes all the difference to everything. Y’know, every note ever written, and that’s kind of the thing we wanted to focus on and we didn’t spend much time on Everything to Nothing at all.
RM: Yeah, there was no stacking or layering on Mean Everything to Nothing. Y’know, we went back and added shit but it was much more, this is a live record. This one was a lot more fine-tuned.
AH: And we all just got better. This was the first time that our brains have been able to do what they wanted to musically. I think this record, I think Simple Maths¸ I think, as a record, it gives us a clean slate to do whatever the hell we want to do next. I don’t think by any means tells a listener that we’re done. That’s kind of the hope for any album in my mind.
The harmonies definitely come out a lot more on this album. There seems to be a lot more quiet sections where the vocals take over. Was that your ambition too?
AH: Yeah, I’m telling you everything you hear on this record is deliberate. We mean every single thing on it. There’s not a part on the record that I hear and go, “I wish we hadn’t have done that.”
RM: We stumbled upon stuff
AH: Oh my god, yeah. It took forever. Well, it didn’t take that long. It took two weeks of straight drum, bass recording and then guitar recording in the best studio in the world, ‘cause that’s all the money that we could spend in a nice place. Then we went home, spent some money on some gear to do everything that followed and we came up with 10 days at Blackbird and then 70 days at home and we had a pretty much finished album. That’s about the right timeline isn’t it? So that’s about 70-90 days. 12 hour days. Just allowing moments to happen. Sometimes we’d just sit there and not record anything, we do that a lot, we do that when we rehearse or write. We write, and then we take a break. We talk about it and we hang out and it’s all good. This record is deliberate. It’s deliberately deliberate.
Have you ever thought of writing something more happy?
AH: Yeah! We do write things more happy.
RM: That’s the thing about our band. We’ve probably finished twelve albums, fifteen albums worth of material through different projects. Stuff like that, we just don’t want you to hear it.
AH: We’re happy people. We wake up happy people. We’re happy people. We all love each other, we love being in this band. We believe that we’re blessed, completely. When we make records we try and do, what we consider as people, as happy people, the most moving, and the most experienced type emotion during an album. I think a lot of people brand that as being some type of like, ‘emo’ and I say, “fuck that”.
You did call the album dark.
AH: It is dark, but there’s nothing wrong with dark! I think dark’s what inspires the light. I think dark takes you to a level where you can realise how great things are and I think this record makes you pay for it. Until you see these moments of light. Whereas Mean Everything to Nothing I think I was far too, not that there’s anything wrong with it, because I think it’s cool that it stands as what it was for a second record but I think there’s more peacefulness on this album. Still dark, but not really blaming anybody.
At the minute you’re over here playing some shows. You’ve played Proud Camden, XOYO and are playing in Manchester tomorrow, has anybody ever come to see you thinking you were an actual orchestra?
AH: First time we played it was called the Night and Day café in Manchester we sold about 90 pre-sale, which was weird because we’d never been. We were like, “uh oh. What if? What if it’s straight up suit, tie? Old men. Old women and we have our amps turned to eleven.” I remember all of us being terrified. It was a little basement, trying to drink as much Carling as we could. We got up there and every single person was going crazy for our band.
RM: They were some of the most crazy fans
AH: That place is a miracle. I love it playing in there. Playing in Manchester. It’s awesome, because they have pride in that we named our band after them. So that’s that. It’s so cool to be able to play in front of those people. We usually say something along the lines of, “We’re home!”
RM: Or, “now that you’re home…”
AH: Yeah! That too. You know Kevin Devine used to sing on that song, when he used to play with us, “Now that you’re home let’s go to Applebees, I’ve been trying so hard to go to Applebees.” [All laugh]
RM: It’s, “Now that you’re home let’s get Applebees”
AH: “Now that you’re home let’s get Applebees, I’ve been trying so hard to get Applebees.” Applebees is a restaurant in the States. Sorry, that probably didn’t make any sense. Applebees is a very big chain of very bad food.
RM: It’s like a more expensive McDonald’s but McDonald’s probably tastes better.
AH: I can’t eat that junk food though.
So why did you name your band after Manchester?
AH: When I was emo I was listening to a ton of Morrisey and I loved, well I still love Morrisey and I still draw influence from that but that was a very big artist for me when I started the band. So I was looking for a band name like that.
And the Orchestra part?
AH: I think it had a lot to do with it wasn’t a band that I started it was just supposed to be a name I went under and do an EP, well I did an EP when I was like 16 under the name that I don’t think ever was released and ended up making that into an EP called Five Stories that had a few of those songs on it. That’s the first thing we ever released but I think the orchestra was I had a bunch of friends, like Jay was playing in another band, I mean, you can probably answer that question, how it came to be or whatever.
JC: Yeah, I mean it really started as Andy’s solo thing, and I remember that the first EP he was mentioning was Five Stories and that was [Andy] literally sitting in a class in high school burning discs and giving them to friends and selling it.
AH: The key is selling.
JC: Yeah, and people were buying them!
AH: I think I bought an iPod with that money.
JC: Probably a first generation.
AH: Definitely first generation.
JC: And that kind of transitioned into Nobody Sings Anymore and then the band took off from there.
AH: Jay and I were are the only two members that played on Nobody Sings Anymore. What’s funny is that Tim was in another band, he played drums for Manchester about 6 years ago. Robert was in another band, this is the funny thing about this group of people that there was a tour that Manchester played in Alabama. Robert’s band was playing, and Tim was playing drums for us. All other than Freeman, I call him the dark knight, everyone was there, and Freeman was the drummer in our first band. The orchestra bit just came from that I hopefully could have a bunch of people collaborating with me because there were so many bands going on but luckily it’s become a really tight knit thing.
Simple Math is out on May 9th, are there any plans past that? Are you coming back for a larger tour?
AH: Yeah, definitely. We’re coming back for a long UK stint in September. This was a situation where we wanted to come over and…
RM: Build hype
AH: Yeah, and hopefully have people excited for us coming back.
Well you have sold out all the shows this tour, so I wish you luck in the future! Thank you very much.
AH: Thank you!
RM: Thank you.
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Well what does your album name mean? I’m pretty sure I’m meant to be interviewing you!
