Review: Manchester Orchestra - Cope
[Loma Vista; 2014]
Rating: 7.5/10
By Zack Baker, Editorial Director
Key Tracks: “Cope,” “The Ocean,” “All I Really Wanted”
For a little while, the “in-the-know” music scene kind of forgot about rock music. It seemed like every new band was selling its guitars and buying turntables and synthesizers to make a new, more methodical style of music. But throughout the whole transition and inevitable incorporation, Manchester Orchestra was there.
The band is synonymous with its sound: huge walls of guitars, Andy Hull’s iconically sky-high yelling fits and a start-stop crescendo structure that leaves songs feeling singularly forceful. Over three LPs, Manchester has refined the sound and worked it down to a science. While it wasn’t always an easy ride (a lá Simple Math’s sometimes agonizing overproduction), the band has made a go of it. In turn, it has built up a base of dedicated fans that will someday soon be able to rival the Cult of New (Brand New fans).
With their latest, Cope, Hull and company are swinging for the fences. The entire album feels so much denser, so much louder, so much more intense than anything the band has put out. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been hinted at on earlier releases, but on Cope the group finally connects, smashing it into the stratosphere.
Early single “Top Notch” was a perfect indicator for the album’s tone, cracking fans across the head and making them remember just how vicious Manchester can sound, vivdly spinning a tale of cursed twins. The guitars are explosive and Hull belts the chorus in a way that makes the listener envy his range. Other boneshakers such as the graveyard-gospel “See It Again” and delightfully drunken and stumbling “All I Really Wanted” match “Top Notch” in intensity, exemplifying The Manchester Pattern™ of thrashing bridges and soft, storybook verses.
Mid-album cut “The Ocean” shows Manchester more deliberate in its pacing than elsewhere on Cope. The song plods along through verses, storing tension only to huck it at the listener in the song’s short, saccharine swoon of a chorus. It’s one of the less aggressive tracks here and the dampening of the guitars showcases Hull’s signature vocals clearly.
The album’s title track is the impenetrable monolith that caps the track listing, landing like a gravestone to seal it all off. “Cope” features the album’s strongest production, generating dense walls of heavy chords almost in place of a chorus, banishing each verse into a realm of its own. It has a heavy effect, shadowing everything in a sense of helplessness that Hull’s pained yells only amplify. It’s deftly monochromatic, making the moment that Hull finally punches through the noise all the more triumphant.
Moments like these are what make Cope a complete experience, the constant push-and-pull between roaring hailstorms of oppressive rhythms and the palm-muted musical umbrella that allows Hull to soar beneath the weight of the music. Sure, it’s what Manchester has been doing since I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child, but now the group has mastered it.
There are a few stumbling points here, however. “Girl Harbor” falls victim to somewhat hokey lyrics on love, hampering an instrumental that’s among the most recklessly driven in the band’s catalog. Songs such as “The Mansion” and “Indentions” slot into the track listing as necessary lulls to make the bangers hit that much harder, but it doesn’t feel like this album was built with tracks like that in mind.
While they're decent tunes, both of these songs hit like abrupt roadblocks. With so much focus on self-destructive behavior in the lyrics, it’s hard not to wish that this album was more of an asteroid falling to earth before your eyes: commanding attention for a scorching, intense moment but leaving behind only a crater and a desire to experience it again.
