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A Black Mile to the Surface

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A Black Mile to the Surface
Studio album by
Manchester Orchestra
ReleasedJuly 21, 2017 (2017-07-21)
Studio
  • Echo Mountain Recording
  • Elmwood West
  • Favorite Gentlemen
  • The Village[1]
Genre
Length49:07
Label
ProducerCatherine Marks
Manchester Orchestra chronology
Hope
(2014) 		A Black Mile to the Surface
(2017) 		The Million Masks of God
(2021)
Singles from
A Black Mile to the Surface
  1. "The Gold"
    Released: June 9, 2017
  2. "The Alien"
    Released: June 22, 2017
  3. "The Moth"
    Released: July 10, 2017

A Black Mile to the Surface is the fifth studio album by American indie rock band Manchester Orchestra. It was released on July 21, 2017, through Loma Vista Recordings and Favorite Gentlemen. Recording for the album took place from the summer of 2016 onwards with producer Catherine Marks. The lead single, "The Gold", was released on June 9, 2017, alongside a music video directed by Mike Dempsey and Johnny Chew. Two more singles, "The Alien" and "The Moth", were released later in the summer.

Inspired by their work on the soundtrack for the 2016 film Swiss Army Man, band members Andy Hull and Robert McDowell set out to create an album that was a reset from the band's previous studio albums Cope and Hope (both 2014). A Black Mile to the Surface is an alternative rock and Americana record, interweaving a concept album set in a South Dakota mining town with reflections on Hull's young daughter. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics, who praised Hull's storytelling and the album's cinematic stylings. Commercially, it performed well, debuting at number 33 on the US Billboard 200.

Background and production

[edit]

In 2014, American indie rock band Manchester Orchestra released two companion albums, Cope and Hope.[2] Following the release of the two albums, keyboard player Chris Freeman departed the band, leaving vocalist Andy Hull and guitarist Robert McDowell the only original members.[3] In 2016, Hull and McDowell collaborated on the soundtrack for the film Swiss Army Man.[4] The experience of crafting an a cappella soundtrack inspired Manchester Orchestra's approach to their next album, with McDowell saying that it "flipped the reset switch" and inspired Manchester Orchestra to "make every little second interesting".[3]

The first three songs to be written for the album were "The Alien", "The Sunshine", and "The Grocery". Hull says, "[o]nce those were written and connected like that, we started to be like, 'Oh you know it'd be cool to do that for the whole thing and actually commit to it'".[5] Many of the songs were reworked over periods of several months, with Hull estimating that "The Moth" took about four and a half months to reach its final form.[6] Hull said that "The Maze" and "The Mistake" both took the longest to perfect, and that producer John Congleton came up with "one more push" that perfected those two tracks.[7]

Manchester Orchestra recorded A Black Mile to the Surface with "a small battery of well-known indie rock producers", among them Catherine Marks, John Congleton, and Jonathan Wilson, as well as longtime collaborator Dan Hannon.[8] The recording process began at Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, North Carolina in the summer of 2016.[8][9] Marks and Manchester Orchestra had begun collaborating over the phone several months prior, and after a week of pre-production, Marks described the two-week studio recording process as a "sonic discovery", during which she and the band experimented with ideas for how each song should sound.[10] Manchester Orchestra traveled to London with Marks for mixing, and Los Angeles for additional production with Congleton, before finishing production at their headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.[8][11]

Composition and themes

[edit]

A Black Mile to the Surface has been classified as indie rock, alternative rock,[12] and Americana, with comparisons to Fleet Foxes,[13] Band of Horses,[14][15] and Mumford & Sons.[15][16] It began life as a concept album set in the mining town of Lead, South Dakota, the home of the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF).[17] As the album developed, the South Dakota narrative began to interweave with Hull's complicated emotions about the birth of his daughter, and his associated feelings of life and death.[18] The opening track, "The Maze", was written a month after the birth of Hull's daughter.[19] While the first four tracks set "a light and dark theme", the narrative part of the record begins on "The Alien", which follows a boy from his childhood abuse into his adult life.[6]

Sonically, Hull and the rest of the band sought to divert from the "heavy, crunchy guitars" that marked other Manchester Orchestra releases.[20] Hull was influenced by the "minimalist aspect" of Alabama Shakes' 2015 record Sound & Color, as well as the bands Wilco and Radiohead. He challenged his bandmates to "[t]ry and do the opposite" of "whatever you're instinctively going to want to play".[8] Marks' vision for the album involved wanting every song to sound like a different room, "Like you could understand where you were in the room and identify where each particular sound was coming from."[21] This process involved physically recording in different rooms of the studios to utilize their different reverberations.[21] The penultimate track, "The Parts", for instance, was recorded in a studio's bathtub, due in part to a hangover from which Hull was suffering.[3]

Hull has said that the central theme of A Black Mile to the Surface is "family, and the circle of life, the significance and insignificance of yourself". The repeated motif of There's nothing I've got when I die that I keep, Hull explained, means: "When this life ends, all you can do is hopefully affect and influence what happens after you."[3] The title of the album derives from a line in "The Gold", selected by a friend of the band as he read through the lyrics.[7]

Release and promotion

[edit]
Manchester Orchestra performing in support of A Black Mile to the Surface in 2017.

Manchester Orchestra announced the name, track list, and cover art for A Black Mile to the Surface on June 9, 2017. The announcement was accompanied by the album's lead single, "The Gold", and a music video for the song, directed by Mike Dempsey and Johnny Chew.[22] The second single, "The Alien", was released 13 days later on NPR, with a video directed by Dempsey and the Daniels.[23] The final pre-album single, "The Moth", was released on July 10, 2017.[24] A Black Mile to the Surface was released on July 21, 2017, through Loma Vista Recordings and the band's own independent label Favorite Gentlemen.[12]

On June 12, 2017, only a few days after the album's announcement, Manchester Orchestra announced a fall 2017 headlining tour.[25] In July, they added support from Tigers Jaw and Foxing to the bill.[26] This was followed by a coheadlining tour with the Front Bottoms in November and December 2018,[27] and a winter 2019 tour with Oso Oso and Foxing to celebrate Manchester Orchestra's 10th anniversary of Mean Everything to Nothing.[28] On February 12, 2021, the band performed A Black Mile To The Surface: The Global Concert Film, a YouTube livestream of the album in its entirety recorded from Echo Mountain Recording studios. Hull described the concert film as "the perfect way to close the Black Mile chapter".[29]

Reception

[edit]

Critical reception

[edit]
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
AnyDecentMusic?7.6/10[30]
Metacritic79/100[31]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[32]
Alternative Press[14]
The A.V. ClubC[16]
Exclaim!9/10[33]
The Guardian[13]
The Irish Times[34]
Kerrang!5/5[35]
Pitchfork7.0/10[15]
PopMatters8/10[12]
Q[36]

A Black Mile to the Surface was met with generally positive reviews from music critics. Review aggregator Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, gave the album an average score of 79,[31] while aggregator AnyDecentMusic? similarly bestowed an average of 7.6 out of 10.[30]

In a positive review for Alternative Press, Brian Shultz wrote that Manchester Orchestra "forge a newly lush, cinematic sound, unraveling detailed tales of characters with abstractly personal references", and highlighted the album's musicality: "Layers upon layers, from acoustic guitars to programmed beats, create a gorgeous and restrained, immersive landscape, culminating in beautifully serene moments like 'The Alien' and 'The Sunshine'."[14] Adam Feibel of Exclaim! praised the album's "sonic story arc — a story about love, marriage, fatherhood and life's constant way onward — complete with an introduction, rising action, climax and falling action that finally wind down to a conclusive, satisfying end".[33] PopMatters writer Chris Ingalls remarked that the album's sound "doesn't derive from the airtight punk influences of decades past; rather, there's an anthemic, widescreen feel to nearly every song [...] inviting comparisons to altruistic, mid-period U2, or even Coldplay".[12]

Other critics were less enthusiastic. Randall Colburn of The A.V. Club found that despite the band's stated intent to "strip back" their sound, "they seem to have gone in the opposite direction—with all the layering, samples, and shout-alongs, A Black Mile to the Surface is bombastic to the point of exhaustion".[16] Carl Purvis was also critical of the album in his review for No Ripcord, writing that, "For a band where constructing songs into rocket-fueled crescendos is their biggest strength, too often does A Black Mile to the Surface fail to take advantage of any momentum it builds, often taking the wrong fork on an ascent to a splendid finale."[37] Ian Cohen of Pitchfork, meanwhile, was critical of the album's storytelling elements, saying that the "more overtly personal material sits awkwardly among the familial drama that served as the original concept".[15]

Commercial performance

[edit]

A Black Mile to the Surface debuted at number 33 on the US Billboard 200 chart.[38] The album also appeared on the US Top Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums charts, peaking at numbers six and seven, respectively.[39][40] In the United Kingdom, A Black Mile to the Surface peaked at number 93 on the UK Official Albums Chart and number 59 on the Scottish Albums Chart.[41][42] Elsewhere, the album appeared on the Swiss Hitparade Albums Top 100 chart at number 73.[43]

Track listing

[edit]

All tracks are written by Andy Hull

A Black Mile to the Surface standard track listing[1]
No.TitleLength
1."The Maze"2:58
2."The Gold"4:33
3."The Moth"4:35
4."Lead, SD"4:53
5."The Alien"5:28
6."The Sunshine"1:57
7."The Grocery"5:12
8."The Wolf"4:26
9."The Mistake"3:54
10."The Parts"4:12
11."The Silence"6:59
Total length:49:07

Personnel

[edit]

Credits taken from A Black Mile to the Surface liner notes.[1]

Charts

[edit]
Weekly chart performance for A Black Mile to the Surface
Chart (2017) Peak
position
Scottish Albums (OCC)[42] 59
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[43] 73
UK Albums (OCC)[41] 93
US Billboard 200[38] 33
US Top Alternative Albums (Billboard)[39] 6
US Top Rock Albums (Billboard)[40] 7

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c A Black Mile to the Surface (booklet). Manchester Orchestra. Loma Vista Recordings. 2017. LVR00173.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  2. ^ Mansfield, Brian (September 16, 2014). "Manchester Orchestra releases surprise album, 'Hope'". USA Today. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d Richards, Will (July 28, 2017). "How Manchester Orchestra became a truly great indie rock band". DIY Mag. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  4. ^ Collis, Clark (June 1, 2016). "Swiss Army Man: Daniel Radcliffe thinks film's music deserves an Oscar". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  5. ^ Krzaczek, Katie (January 18, 2018). "Manchester Orchestra's 'The Gold (Live)' Premiere: Band Talks Recording 'A Black Mile To The Surface': Exclusive". Billboard. Archived from the original on June 30, 2018. Retrieved February 19, 2021.
  6. ^ a b Belling, Alasdair (January 8, 2017). "Interview: Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra". Kill Your Stereo. Archived from the original on August 14, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  7. ^ a b Goodwyn, Tom (October 23, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra open up about new album Black Mile To The Surface..." HMV. Archived from the original on January 15, 2021. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  8. ^ a b c d Hyden, Steven (June 28, 2017). "How Manchester Orchestra Grew Up And Re-Invented Themselves On 'A Black Mile To The Surface'". Uproxx. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  9. ^ "Manchester Orchestra Releases 'A Black Mile to the Surface'". Echo Mountain. July 29, 2017. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  10. ^ "MPG's Producer Of The Year Catherine Marks Talks Rising Through The Ranks". MusicTech. February 6, 2018. Archived from the original on February 18, 2021. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  11. ^ "Manchester Orchestra". BottleRock Napa Valley. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  12. ^ a b c d Ingalls, Chris (August 2, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile to the Surface". PopMatters. Archived from the original on August 3, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  13. ^ a b Gibsone, Harriet (July 27, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile to the Surface review – grownup indie rock". The Guardian. Archived from the original on August 3, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  14. ^ a b c Shultz, Brian (June 28, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile To The Surface". Alternative Press. Archived from the original on July 11, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  15. ^ a b c d Cohen, Ian (August 7, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile to the Surface". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on June 22, 2019. Retrieved June 22, 2019.
  16. ^ a b c Colburn, Randall (July 28, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra's latest is overproduced and exhausting". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on December 7, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  17. ^ Ross, Alex Robert (August 2, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra Know That Winter Is Coming". VICE. Archived from the original on November 11, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  18. ^ Tipple, Ben. "'Circle of life': A Conversation with Manchester Orchestra". GoldFlakePaint. Archived from the original on March 14, 2021. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  19. ^ Condran, Ed (June 15, 2018). "Manchester Orchestra has evolved, matured, and has a handle on their sonic situation". The News & Observer. Archived from the original on July 2, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  20. ^ Thraxton, Ryan (June 9, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra Announce New Album Out in Late July, Release First Signal". Paste. Archived from the original on October 22, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  21. ^ a b "Manchester Orchestra (Acoustic)". College Street Music Hall. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  22. ^ Thaxton, Ryan (June 9, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra Announce New Album Out in Late July, Release First Single". Paste. Archived from the original on October 22, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  23. ^ Boilen, Bob (June 22, 2017). "First Watch: Manchester Orchestra 'The Alien'". NPR. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  24. ^ "Listen to new Manchester Orchestra song 'The Moth'". Upset. July 10, 2017. Archived from the original on October 31, 2019. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
  25. ^ Sacher, Andrew (June 12, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra announce 2017 tour". BrooklynVegan. Archived from the original on June 17, 2017. Retrieved February 20, 2017.
  26. ^ Sacher, Andrew (July 7, 2017). "Tigers Jaw and Foxing opening Manchester Orchestra tour". BrooklynVegan. Archived from the original on February 24, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  27. ^ Tornow, Sam (August 13, 2018). "Manchester Orchestra Announces Co-Headlining Tour With The Front Bottoms". Billboard. Archived from the original on August 19, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  28. ^ Sacher, Andrew (September 18, 2019). "Foxing & Oso Oso opening Manchester Orchestra's 'Mean Everything To Nothing' tour". BrooklynVegan. Archived from the original on January 17, 2021. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  29. ^ "Manchester Orchestra Announce A Black Mile to the Surface: the Global Concert Album". American Songwriter. February 7, 2021. Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 20, 2021.
  30. ^ a b "A Black Mile To The Surface by Manchester Orchestra reviews". AnyDecentMusic?. Archived from the original on December 18, 2019. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  31. ^ a b "Reviews and Tracks for A Black Mile to the Surface by Manchester Orchestra". Metacritic. Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
  32. ^ Collar, Matt. "A Black Mile to the Surface – Manchester Orchestra". AllMusic. Archived from the original on July 29, 2017. Retrieved July 30, 2017.
  33. ^ a b Feibel, Adam (July 26, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile to the Surface". Exclaim!. Archived from the original on August 3, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  34. ^ Murphy, Lauren (July 27, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile to the Surface – rising US band show their depth". The Irish Times. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  35. ^ Ryan Freitas (July 15, 2017). "Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile to the Surface". Kerrang!. p. 50.
  36. ^ Garner, George (September 2017). "Manchester Orchestra: A Black Mile to the Surface". Q (376): 113.
  37. ^ Purvis, Carl (August 23, 2017). "Quick Takes (July 2017)". No Ripcord. Archived from the original on September 6, 2017. Retrieved September 5, 2017.
  38. ^ a b "Manchester Orchestra Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved August 8, 2017.
  39. ^ a b "Manchester Orchestra Chart History (Top Alternative Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved August 8, 2017.
  40. ^ a b "Manchester Orchestra Chart History (Top Rock Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved August 8, 2017.
  41. ^ a b "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved August 5, 2017.
  42. ^ a b "Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved August 5, 2017.
  43. ^ a b "Swisscharts.com – Manchester Orchestra – A Black Mile to the Surface". Hung Medien. Retrieved August 9, 2017.
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