This young band, fronted by lead singer and songwriter Andy Hull, is content with rocking-the-fuck-out; and during their performance at a filled Beaumont Club on Friday night that's exactly what they did.
That's neither praise nor demerit. If you can do one thing, do it well.
Manchester Orchestra lacked diversity, though, creating a gauzy blur of thick pummeling riffs and pounded snares. This kind of consistency can give an album a diamond-cut quality, with firm sonic boundaries outlining the integral whole; that's probably why Manchester Orchestra's second album, Mean Everything to Nothing, was released to such wide praise last year. Translated to the stage, however, the experience becomes overwhelming and rocking-the-fuck-out fatigue sets in.
That's where slow-tempo ballads like "Colly Strings" come in to mitigate the fraught anxiety created by so much contourless rockers in the set. One of the band's better moments, "Colly Strings" is still an epic and grating piledriver, but it is buoyed by a first half featuring Andy Hull's unabashedly sentimental lyrics, delivered earnestly against light plucking and some abstract drone.
Their set included a few songs in this mode, and it was during these moments it became clear just what a sentimental motherfucker Andy Hull really is. Hitting surprisingly high registers during rising emotional sweeps, Hull's lyrics were delivered through a voice with range resembling Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock on the faster, harder-hitting numbers, and Conor Oberst, when he was slowing things down.
Manchester Orchestra funneled all their might into performing, making the task of creating stacked, tectonic riffs seem as if it were the same as sculpting mountains using dynamite. Maybe it is. Perhaps it was the image of band members digging deeply and forcibly over their instruments that gave their overwrought, emo-infused epics credibility. Every member of Manchester Orchestra was technically skilled in creating powerful and soaring noise.
The crowd seemed to like 'em. And when they stepped away from the sweaty work of rocking-the-fuck-out, the band members were likable too; their youthful banter and mild joking a stark contrast to the seriousness of their powerhouse performance. However, the ultimate aftertaste of seeing Manchester Orchestra is one of excessive blandness, despite the awesome energy and enviable prowess of the band members.
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