Manchester Orchestra Music Videos , Pictures and Photos including Black Man (live), I've Got Friends (live), Shake It Out (live), SXSW 09 Interview & Performance Music Videos on Blastro

Manchester Orchestra

Manchester Orchestra’s beginnings lie in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, where songwriter Andy Hull decided to home school himself at age 16 and put all of his focus into writing and recording. Heartened by all the positive feedback, Hull took the advice and spent his senior year in the studio. Freed from traditional school, Hull delved deep into creating the characters and stories that were to make up the ambitious concept album that was to be Manchester Orchestra’s debut.

As time passed and the band’s evolving line-up began to solidify, the feel of Hull’s songwriting began to change. Emboldened by longtime friend, and band-mate Jonathan Corley (bass) and the addition of Jeremiah Edmond (drums) into the group, Manchester Orchestra’s musicianship began to take new flight. It soon became clear that this was the sound of a different band. Not content with forsaking all of their hard work, the revitalized group decided to pare the album Nobody Sings Anymore down to an EP entitled You Brainstorm, I Brainstorm, But Brilliance Needs A Good Editor, which they released on their own label, Favorite Gentlemen, and get out on the road. According to Hull the decision to champion chemistry over concept was easily made.

After Brainstorm’s release, the band focused on touring the southeast. During this period, another one of Hull’s close friends, keyboardist Chris Freeman, entered the fold. Manchester Orchestra’s musical direction was now solidified and the band began writing songs for their full-length, follow-up.

These new songs, which would become I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child, were powerful, compact rockers that battered away at one structure before taking an abrupt turn into the next. The effect is akin to getting lost on purpose: Just as the layout makes sense – even familiar – it’s the unexpected detours that maintain the thrill.

Though Manchester Orchestra’s new songs were decidedly not going to comprise a concept album per se, Hull still found that his lyrical voice was best spoken through characters rather than personal experience. “I think that a lot of the time music should be like movies,” says Hull. “Whether or not the songs are from characters’ perspective they’re still characters in my brain. So they’re different parts of my personality saying whatever it is that that person’s feeling. When you’re in a band when your seventeen there’s a big difference between nineteen and twenty. We’ve always taken our band very seriously but we didn’t know what to take seriously. These songs are a whole lot more ‘this is what our band sounds like and this is what we wanna write.’”
After months of writing, rehearsing and touring on their new materia,l the band decided that the next album should reflect the same energy as their creative process. When the band entered the recording studio with producer Dan Hannon in the summer of 2006, they played everything live – passionately bashing their songs out together in the same room. Manchester Orchestra’s full-length debut, I Am Like A Virgin Losing A Child, was born. Along the way they found a new comrade in studio intern Robert McDowell who would later become a full-fledged member of the band.

The strength of I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child coupled with the band’s gift for giving powerful performances has caught the attention of many including Rolling Stone Magazine who raved about the band in their recent “10 Artists to Watch” feature. The New York Times said, "This is a fundamentally immodest album: music to swoon to." Hull is keeping pragmatic: “I think we need to play as many shows as we possibly can and just continue to have fun but maintain as much control as we can over our destiny and try to grow our band organically.”

In September 2008, the band announced they had begun recording their second LP entitled Mean Everything to Nothing. It is to be released on April 21, 2009.

From Lastfm:

Manchester Orchestra is an indie rock band which formed in Atlanta, Georgia, United States in 2005. They consist of Andy Hull (vocals, guitar), Robert McDowell (guitar), Jonathan Corley (bass), Christopher Freeman (keyboards) and Jeremiah Edmond (drums, 2005-2010). The band has released two albums - 2006's "I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child" and 2009's "Mean Everything to Nothing".

Mean Everything To Nothing , the second album from Atlanta's Manchester Orchestra, is everything you want a rock record to be: raw, urgent, emotional, and 100 percent authentic. "There is nothing fake about this record," says frontman and lyricist Andy Hull. "There's not one fake sound on it. We recorded it live because we wanted it to sound like a band, and I think it does: live and loud!"

Inspired by the pounding, primal assault of Weezer's Pinkerton , Nirvana's In Utero , and Foo Fighters' The Colour and the Shape , this young band has created its own version of what a classic rock album should sound like, complete with fiercely beautiful melodies, shifting guitar and keyboard textures, loud/soft dynamics, and an urgency in each band member's performance, especially Hull's cathartic vocals.

The drama is magnified by the fact that the album's first six songs bleed into one another without stopping. The blistering opener "The Only One" immediately gives way to the propulsive "Shake It Out" and the torrential first single "I've Got Friends," followed by the anguished "Pride" and the menacing "In My Teeth," before slowing down on the darkly funny "100 Dollars." Then the album pauses and down-shifts into less relentless yet equally gripping territory on songs from "I Can Feel A Hot One" (which was featured on Gossip Girl last September), to the ruminative closer "The River."

The breakneck pace is both exhilarating and exhausting, which Hull says was intentional. "I like the fact that there isn't a chance during the first six songs to say anything if you're listening to it with somebody. It's seamless. We did that to emphasize that there are two halves to the album." The first half is a brooding tale of teenage angst and anger -- the confusion and disillusionment of growing up and becoming an adult. The second half is about redemption and an overall re-evaluation of the self. It's about Hull beginning to realize in his own words "that things are not ok, I am not ok, and there's a beauty in that -- a calming, a forgiveness," he says.

A fully realized album, Mean Everything To Nothing is the sound of a band coming into its own after spending 300 days on the road in support of their debut album, 2007's I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child -- a coming-of-age chronicle that expressed the then 19-year-old Hull's hopes and aspirations as he sought spiritual knowledge. Virgin was an attention-getting shot across the bow that Rolling Stone praised as "expansive in scope and rich in texture, even while remaining lyrically focused on small moments of revelation" and the New York Times called "music to swoon to." But whereas the songs on the debut were voiced by a fictional cast of characters that Hull created to obscure his own emotions, the intensely personal songs on Mean Everything To Nothing are all him. "I was able to be more honest when singing as someone else," admits Hull, who is now 22. "Now I've realized, although it's incredibly difficult, it's more powerful to just say it myself."

Although Hull writes all the lyrics, he describes the process of making Mean Everything to Nothing as more collaborative than that of its predecessor. "Writing the album was such a joy for me because the things these guys contributed were insane," Hull says. "I had plenty of suggestions and opinions, but the parts are theirs. This was not a one-man show. Jeremiah is patient and wise; he'd make me play a song five times before jumping in during our writing rehearsals. Robert's talent and creativity are obvious throughout the album. His vocals, keys, and guitar parts shine in moments where you don't expect them to. Jonathan has always been an amazing bassist, but on this album he let go with more freedom in writing his parts than he has before. And Chris doesn't really play keys, it's more like lead guitar. Most of the moments that sound like a crazy guitar are actually keyboard. He really made the record his own by writing ambient swells, piercing tones, and adding chunky, beefy distortion."

Indeed the band's chemistry is palpable on Mean Everything To Nothing , perhaps because, after more than a year of touring with such artists as Kings of Leon, Brand New, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Say Anything, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, as well as performing their own headlining shows, Manchester Orchestra has become a powerful and well-oiled machine. "The touring made us so incredibly tight on all levels," Hull says, "so there was no pride involved if someone said, 'No that doesn't work, don't do that.' No one got their feelings hurt because we were all dedicated to the same thing -- making the best record we could."

The band were supported in the process by their producers, studio vet Joe Chiccarelli (The Shins, My Morning Jacket, The Raconteurs) in conjunction with longtime friend and producer Dan Hannon and the band. "Joe is the absolute tone master," Hull says. "The sounds he gets are so good. We wrote these songs so quickly and he was great in helping us do surgery to make them better. When Dan came in, it was like fresh blood pumping through the project. He'd move five knobs and click a few things and it was like, 'Oh shit, that's great.' The whole thing was a great collaboration."

Recorded last fall in Nashville and Atlanta, the album was made on the heels of a very active period for the band. In 2008, they played several major U.S. festivals, including Coachella and Lollapalooza, and released a five-song EP, Let My Pride Be What's Left Behind , in October. Included with the EP is a DVD of the previously unreleased What's Left Behind documentary film of the band directed by Sam Erickson (My Morning Jacket's Okonokos ). In addition, Hull released The Eventually Home -- the second installment of his epic solo project Right Away, Great Captain , which tells the ongoing saga of a 17 th -century sailor who catches his wife in an act of betrayal with his own brother. All of Hull's and Manchester Orchestra's output is released on Favorite Gentleman Recordings, the indie label Hull and Edmond founded in 2004 as a way to stay in control of their music and to pass along the good fortune of their own success by signing other artists, like Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Kevin Devine.

"It's all been great," Hull says, "but I'd have to say the best thing about the past year has been developing the brotherhood the five of us have. This band has been through hard times and come out stronger than ever before. That's what makes it worth it."

Mean Everything To Nothing will be released by Favorite Gentlemen/Canvasback on April 21 st , 2009.

The release will be preceded by the accompanying EP "Fourteen Years of Excellence," which features 3 new tracks and an alternate slowed down version of "Shake it Out."

Fourteen Years of Excellence will be available April 18, 2009.

From Wikipedia:

Manchester Orchestra is an American indie rock band from Atlanta, Georgia, formed in 2005. The group is made up of rhythm guitarist-singer-songwriter Andy Hull, lead guitarist Robert McDowell, keyboardist and percussionist Chris Freeman, bassist Jonathan Corley and, currently, replacement drummer Len Clark. Former drummer Jeremiah Edmond parted ways with the band in January 2010 to focus on his family as well as running the band's record label, Favorite Gentlemen. To date they have released several extended plays and two studio albums to critical praise ? I'm Like a Virgin Losing a Child (2006) and Mean Everything to Nothing (2009). They are currently signed to independent record label Favorite Gentlemen Recordings which is distributed through Sony Music Entertainment.