When the banner flashed across my screen that Manchester Orchestra’s newest record had been released, I knew it marked the end of an era. I also knew, like all the other albums, that it was not all that it seemed. I was right.
After several months following its release, the pioneer seventh record is finally beginning to make sense to me. You see, it is a long-term relationship when a new work is released by these Atlanta natives. You have to commit at least a few months to let the lyrics marinate, bathe in the amplified rawness of the sound and marinate again. When it comes to anything involved with the writer and lead singer, Andy Hull, you find that the complexity in his lyrics only digs deeper and deeper, until finally, after dozens of listens, the whole project eventually makes sense.
This was my experience with “The Valley of Vision,” a fulfilling last installment to the concept narrative being carefully constructed for the last two albums and, more impressively, over seven years.
Lying in bed in the dark, with the final lines of Hull’s voice fading out into silence, I found myself tearing up a little. I had never cried from music before but somehow, Andy Hull’s masterful craft, the magnitude of the narrative and the heaviness of the story written over seven years sent me just over the edge.
Beginning with the dark and thunderous sound of the first album of the concept trilogy, the 2017 predecessor, “A Black Mile to the Surface” better known as “A Black Mile” not only sets the tone for the entire trilogy to unfold but is grounds for potentially being the best album of Manchester Orchestra’s entire discography. Heavily inspired by Hull’s fears and anxieties about becoming a new father, the record tackles themes of the duality of doubt/faith, legacy and fatherhood which reoccur countlessly throughout the loosely connected trilogy. It is up for speculation that the characters from “A Black Mile” are the same characters in “The Million Masks of God” but there are endless references to “A Black Mile” in the second and third concept albums. I’d like to believe they are.
“A Black Mile to the Surface” covers the story of a family living in the misery of a depressive mining town called Lead, SD. There are multiple characters who speak, and it is up to the listener to piece the story together themselves. It begins soft and hopeful as Hull sings from the perspective of a soon-to-be father who is slowly giving into madness, his pregnant wife and his brother. In the second song, “The Gold,” The father has slowly grown insane from the influences of the snow-ridden town, pushed over by the claustrophobic purgatory of the gold mine, Homestake. It instantly crashes into the next song, “The Moth,” as a gritty chorus of electric guitars, an explosion of drums and ever-humming bass, vibrating with Hull’s howling tones.
The rest of the album is a heart-wrenching roller coaster, tackling the downfall of a father, covering a suicide-triggered car wreck, a grocery store shooting and the sprinkled mentions of an abusive father. To the listener’s shock, the father shoots his wife, pregnant with his unborn daughter and the man’s self-destruction becomes complete, as he disappears from the story in prison.
The last few songs shift as Hull’s narrative shifts to the madman’s brother, and he adopts his daughter in hopes of retrieving her from the family’s dramatic hellscape. The last song, “The Silence,” is a slow, rising roar As the new father of the little girl, the brother, confronts his fear of his legacy, and talks to God as a broken man left doomed to raise a daughter with the weight of his family’s sin and detrimental legacy on his shoulders. The last two minutes is an epic chorus as the brother realizes that God placed him through all of the family’s evils for him to hold onto the gifts he still has, namely, his newborn daughter.
This is where the second album of the trilogy, “The Million Masks of God” takes hold. Where “A Black Mile” was written in response to Andy Hull’s daughter, which opens to a love letter called “The Maze,” “The Million Masks of God” was written in response to the death of guitarist’s, Robert McDowell, father. Also known as “Masks,” the album opens with a conversation with the protagonist’s father in a soft, ambient whirr of a lullaby. The record encapsulates the main themes of the sister record, regarding faith, fatherhood and legacy that is woven into a concept about a man taken on a drive with the Angel of Death is transformed into a radical being for the afterlife. There he views snapshots of his life and reflects on his sins and downfall as a man.
It is a flipside mirror image of its sister record, retaining all of the complexities of the narrative’s balanced ambiguity, while the sound itself is more hopeful than the darkness and despair from “A Black Mile.” Throughout the story, there are several instances in the midst of “A Black Mile”‘s chaos about a higher being, hoping/wishing that a higher love exists, perhaps foreshadowing the events to come in “Masks.”
Then comes the haunting surrealism in the final installment, “The Valley of Vision.” If there was any doubt of “A Black Mile” being the predecessor events before these two, “Masks” and “Vision” are certainly linear. These six songs are the soft and fitting conclusion of this trilogy revolves around loss and faith. The sound is so much different than any Manchester Orchestra record to date, breaking new ground with an experimentally atmospheric feel, leaning into the more spiritual aspects of the narrative. It is soft and slow, heavy on bass and less on the clashing of gritty chords and pounding drums. In fact, it’s likely that the whole record was done electronically. This isn’t a bad thing.
This is a fitting style that embodies the study of how to keep living after tragedy. Diving into a pool of emotions with ethereal tones and soundscapes pulsed alive by soft bass beats, The final chapter of the narrative is meant to be softer and quieter than the rest of Manchester Orchestra’s rock-driven works. This approach to the sound and Hull’s softer vocals feels accepting of the tragedy, comforting, even. Above all, it sounds hopeful, more hopeful than the moments than the other albums.
At the end of the day, Manchester Orchestra’s overarching theme in these three records is finding love between the darker layers of human nature. But instead of expressing this love through cliché, ambiguous examples that can be applied to any person at any time, as is shown through countless modern regurgitations of corporate-constrained pop, Manchester’s approach never holds your hand. This is what Manchester Orchestra does so well. It never takes the safe route in its storytelling and never conforms to the easy repetitive nature of stock popular music. I don’t think a six-minute song about a grocery store shooting would be very catchy on Sirius XM.
It forces the listener to endure a heartbreaking narrative that weaves itself through the darkest corners of human nature, requiring the listener to search for its meaning on their own as opposed to being told what the song means. The listeners who decide to stick for the long haul and analyze the story for what it tackles fears and doubts that everyone has, yet seldom speaks about. Hull’s poetry-driven songwriting is unmatched in this aspect because he is able to both; he is able to tell a meaningful story while never trading it for quality melodies. In this case, Hull has his cake and eats it too. At the end of the day, These three albums encapsulate the human being as a flawed, confused being who’s helpless without a light, a higher being, to pull them out of that black mile, that horrible mine that is this life.
“A Black Mile to the Surface,” “The Million Masks of God” and “The Valley of Vision” are available anywhere music is streamed.
Both album films “A Black Mile to the Surface” and “The Valley of Vision” can be found free on YouTube.