Then take ‘Leave it Alone’ a decent track which had the potential to rival ‘I Can Feel A Hot One’, but it falls short with yet another melodramatic string section. ‘Mighty’ could be a deliciously destructive track, but the over-the-top orchestration, and ending leave it second fiddle to a track like METN’s snarling ‘Pride’. There’s just a niggling sense of underachievement. That’s not at all to say that this album is at all bad, or a failure. It’s catchy as hell, furiously fired-up, packed with attitude, as Hull simply puts it, “it’s got that rock and that roll!”.īut “that rock and that roll” is just too infrequent a visitor on Simple Math to reach the bar set by their previous effort. Just listen to when they do: ‘April Fool’ doesn't take any prisoners, beginning almost immediately with a feisty guitar riff and in no time Hull lets himself become completely absorbed by his own lyrics, screaming and delivering those special moments that were so frequent on Mean Everything to Nothing. These are Manchester Orchestra’s most appealing strengths, and they should play to them. The problem here is there is such a strong desire to make every track epic or cathartic which works as a stigma for the band and as a result their delightful charm, their sense of fun, their rock n’ roll attitude, and, almost, their individuality are slowly fading. On the whole the track is good enough, and this is certainly the peak of the album’s over-the-top nature, but this overindulgence plagues Simple Math throughout. But, with that, Hull and co have almost overdone themselves. Following ‘Virgin’s lyrics about building houses with blood and crucifying fire, surrounded by booming guitars, allows the kids to really nail home the fact that some epic shit is going down. This is exactly what these little monkeys have been deployed for in Manchester Orchestra’s third full-length Simple Math. Kids are cute, innocent and harmless, but get together a chorus of them and suddenly the rascals will have you running for the hills. Was there ever a time when they weren’t creepy? Here’s what I don’t get.
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