the making of mean everything to nothing by manchester orchestra - featuring andy hull

Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

Manchester Orchestra formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 2004 by Andy Hull. Hull had been writing songs in high school and began playing with bassist Jonathan Corley and drummer Jeremiah Edmond. They self-released their first EP in 2005 and brought in keyboardist Chris Freeman around this time. Their debut album, I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child, was released in 2006 on their own label. They got the attention of Canvasback Recordings, who re-released the album one year later. Guitarist Robert McDowell joined the band and they began working on their second album with Joe Chiccarelli producing. Mean Everything to Nothing was eventually released in 2009. 

In this episode, for the 15th anniversary, Andy Hull reflects on how the album came together. This is the making of Mean Everything to Nothing. 

 Andy Hull: I am Andy Hull from the rock and roll band Manchester Orchestra, and we are discussing our second album, Mean Everything to Nothing. Just the pressure felt pretty enormous at all times when making that record, cause now all of a sudden there is a company behind it. I'd just gotten married, you know, it's like, it's cool when you're in your late teens and I would even say now to anyone who's doing it, it's still cool for most of your twenties (laughs). But like for me at that particular point, I was sort of weirdly seasoned and I'd kind of been through it for four or five years. And I just felt a tremendous weight, you know, “Can I deliver here?” The sophomore slump was, it was the reaper in the corner at all times. And so it was, it really became, I don't know, I try at times when things get foggy or I start to kind of lose my way, I just look at like the fundamental thing that is, that I still believe weirdly from then to this day, which is just like, “try to make excellent work and work really hard.” And for us at that time, it was like, “We have to obliterate I'm Like a Virgin Losing a Child, like we must go above.” You know, at the time it was like we were out for blood. 

So my senior year of high school, which would have been 2004 going into 2005, I had dropped out of high school and was homeschooling myself, quote unquote, which took a couple of years (laughs). Maybe around when me and everything came out is when I finally got that diploma.  But yeah we had like, I worked on this record called Nobody Sings Anymore for my whole senior year. I was trying to figure out the fundamentals of like how to be in a band and what that actually looked like. And so I took to, you know, the route of learning from other bands and going on tour and selling merch and sort of figuring out how, you know, you can survive on like $5 a day per band member and very early level DIY business. So we made this record, we played SXSW in 2005. I'm taking you all the way back. But the response was sort of underwhelming to what we were doing. We've had like weird slots playing with Over the Rhine at 2:30 at Maggie Mae’s and just like destroying everybody's hearing and like, wasn't really understanding what this like, you know, over emotive, raw, open wound of a band was doing that, you know, still had catchy songs or was trying to. So we, I remember the drive back from Austin, Texas, me and our drummer, Jeremiah, just plotting what we were going to do. We were going to like, “Who cares, let's not try and find a manager, let's not try and find a label, we'll just do this on our own.” 

We end up making I'm Like a Virgin, sort of had this dynamic that was building, the people in the band at the time too, it was like, we were like new at it, but we've been doing our own thing our own way since, you know, our teens. It was a really cool kind of combination of people, we ended up getting these interesting sounds because we had to find our own pocket. It wasn't sort of a regular pocket, especially Jeremiah's drumming. It sort of was this whole sound where I think the record I'd worked on my senior year felt a little more polished, or what would have been my senior year, and we weren't really polished. There was kind of nothing polished about us. So we started, yeah, writing I'm Like a Virgin songs, touring the country as much as we could, you know, eventually attracting a couple of like support shows and a manager sees us here, there, and we released I'm Like a Virgin. And it's just like a very slow sleeper and more and more I start hearing, without us doing anything other than playing, you know, and trying to promote it like online as best we could, but not really doing much there. Just sort of like it was a record that sort of got passed around. And I was surprised, you know, because we tried really hard on that record and I knew it was going to be, you know, the first sort of step in the hopes of Manchester having, you know, a long lasting career. But I never expected the response. And I remember our managers, other labels were sort of coming to us and that started like this two years of labels following us around. We were playing dive clubs for no one, you know, and like. Atlantic Records is flying over to see us in like Jackson, Mississippi. It was a funny time. And we thought they were crazy. I remember saying to my manager, like, “These people are going to be disappointed if they think we're even going to sell like 30,000 copies of this record.” And our manager going like, “Are you out of your mind?” Which, you know, still to me, it's pretty, I have to remind myself, it's like such a cool goal to have fans, but this was all such a part of like trying to cultivate that in a way that was meaningful and organic. We get a really great tour with this band Brand New, meet our future collaborator, Kevin Devine on that tour. That opens up the world for us cause we're then able to kind of display what we're made of in front of people and opening sets like that are so great because it's 25 minutes. It's like it's all killer no filler. And then it started to like, you know, seep in that it's probably a good idea to try and find a record deal to help us move, you know, up a few more steps and give us more reach. And we wanted to go overseas and still wanted to maintain some sort of independence. So we found a killer A&R guy who started a record label called Canvasback that would eventually go on to success under the Atlantic umbrella, but at the time he was under the Columbia umbrella and signed us to re-release Virgin in ‘07. And then we would have toured that, I mean, pretty much by the time we got around to Mean Everything to Nothing, we were so ready to make new music because it had been a song like “Wolves at Night” or “Collie Strings” on our first record or “Into the World.” Which, a few of these songs we still play to this day, so it's ironic, but like, they'd been three years old for us, we're like, “okay,” you know, we knew what we were doing live was like this more raw, powerful vibe than what was coming across on the record. So think a bit, we were like foaming at the mouth to start at it, not really knowing what we were about to undertake. 

And so we write these, you know, 11 songs. We really only wrote the 11. There were no B-sides on that record that were like fleshed out full band songs. And I remember Steve Ralbovsky coming down to our practice space in Atlanta and us playing him, almost all of them, and him being really, really excited about it. Immediately he took to “I've Got Friends,” which ended up being our first sort of radio song that connected with more than just sort of a, you know, the scene that we were in and a part of, whatever that was. I don't think we've ever found that scene (laughs). But we were in between them, underground. And then that started like, yeah, the process of, “Do we bring in somebody else?” We were so weary of blowing it, you know, and creating something that was really polished or like, we were very like anti “The Man” in a lot of ways and in a lot of ways still are. But I also think there's moments where like it doesn't hurt to befriend “The Man” and maybe “The Man” has a good idea (laughs), you know, but back then it was like the enemy. Even though, you know, we've signed this licensing deal with these people and  I mean, here's a great example, we didn't allow when they picked up Virgin, we didn't allow the team at Columbia to even pitch the song to radio. We were anti radio. And I, it's hilarious to think back now, it’s like, “Well, what's the,” you know, I look back at this point in my life, I go, “What's the problem with having a song on the radio? Who cares?” That's like, that's a great, you know, you don't aim for it, but if something gets played, how cool, you know, it's just another nice little bonus. But we just, yeah, we wanted to like stay true. And I'm glad we did. You know, I think in a weird way we knew, and I knew, I couldn't handle that. I was so young, you know, and at this point of Mean Everything to Nothing, I'm 21 years old, you know, going to turn 22 in like six months. So it's a lot of life that was happening at that time. So kind of “fuck ‘The Man,’” was weirdly necessary. You know, it was also based on Pinkerton for us as well. Which is hilarious, it's like the failing second record, but for us, it was all about like, no, like getting to the rawness. And I think if it were up to us at that time too, Mean Everything would have been even more fucked up. And I think it's a good thing that there were some restraints that were put on it, that sort of allowed for more dynamic and patience on it.

And so we came across Joe Chiccarelli from the records he'd worked on. I mean, this is like, you know, from ‘05, ‘06, ‘07 around that time. It's like second Raconteurs record was one of the best sounding rock records that had come out in forever White Stripes, Icky Thump, The Shins third record, which was stunning album and My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges and all these records had this feel of like, it felt pushed beyond what we'd heard from them before. And that was what I wanted, and I didn't know how they got that or, you know, at that time it's like, sure, there's probably like some magic man who's going to make all that happen. But when we found out that he enjoyed the demos, and the demos were like laughable, they were all done on like a Macbook microphone and distorted beyond belief. But he ended up liking them and thought the songs had potential and, we knew we still wanted to work with Dan Hannon, who had helped guide us, and has been like a big mentor in my life since I was 17, 18 years old. But we also knew it was like, this is the opportunity to go try. You know, “Let's go,” we were pretty liberal, we did like two weeks in like the nicest studio we could find, Blackbird, and Joe had a cool deal there, and White Stripes had worked there. But yeah, that's sort of how we ended up falling into Joe's world. You know, what Joe wanted to accomplish there, which I didn't know because I was, you know, at this time, 22, was to try and capture, you know, this perfectly. That there will be no need for edits, there will be no need, like, “The band's gonna nail this.” And, you know, to his credit, we ended up using, you know, most of them, the 22nd, 23rd, 24th take. But one thing it did was strangle the fun out of it. And so it sort of started a weird relationship where the record became sort of the enemy. We knew that the record was great. I just didn't know how we were going to do it and then once we started doing it, that's what proved to be really difficult. You know, it's always like, it's easy to have big dreams, it's hard to do them. 

I remember telling my dad that I'd written, you know, the line, I'm close with my dad and I've always been close to my dad and this record, I think that, you know, the lore of it over time I've heard, and when I've talked to people is that, you know, it comes across like, it's not very that kind to my dad. But I don't ever look at it that way, I've never considered it in any way, you know, a slight at all. It's more a representation. There's this line on “In My Teeth,” where I say, like, “John spoke a theory straight into my brain. God dammit, you mean to do that to me?” You know, my name is John, and my dad's name is John, and my grandfather's name is John. And so I think, you know, a lot of, like, the thing I was fighting against was the representation of a belief that I like believed in that was being used in really terrible ways, and I had spent, you know, a large portion of my life trying to get as far away from these sort of fake, crazy Christian people. And so it was really, you know, and I think it ends up being summed up that way with “The River” of like, “I'm gonna strip back everything else and like, look for God.” Which I think is still very much the path that I'm, you know, on and still in search of, but this was definitely, like, I don't know, I never did any of it for shock, and I think that's probably why it, like, resonated. I wasn't like, “Oh, all the pastor's kids are gonna think this line's fire” (laughs). It was like, that was just how I felt, you know?  And you're wrestling with that, it's like, you're drinking at a venue in England for the sixth time that year and, you know, you can't remember the last time you've been home and you're going like, “Oh my dad and grandfather weren't doing this.” Like, “am I doing,” you know, “am I training, like, am I doing the right thing? There's this weird pull, you know, but ironically, you know, that's sort of where I find God the most is in those moments. I didn't experience any of those years, like, I don't know college people, like, I can't like relate to that period of time of like, “Focus on something,” but also like, “this is the chance to like, you know, have fun and party and, you know, do irresponsible stuff.” It's like, if I did irresponsible stuff, I wasn't getting paid or, you know, the band was going to fall apart. So there was a tremendous weight in that sense. I had just gotten married. A lot of this record's interesting as time goes on, it's like such a precursor of stuff that I was feeling that eventually kind of gets hashed out with Simple Math, but just like these deep fears of like, “Oh my God, I'm committed. What am I going to do?” And I still, you know, me and my wife and I just celebrated 15 years.  It's amazing, but I look back and go like, “I don't know why you like thought this would work. Like who would have thought this would work?” And I don't even think she did necessarily. It was more that she loved me, which is even better. You know, like she believed in like me as a person. And so a lot of it's like, yeah, deep fear and anger, deep unresolved, like anger that I hadn't pinpointed where it was coming from. And just everything moving so fast and just, you know, going from sort of, “I'm the one that's dictating what's happening in my life and I'm the one booking these shows and I'm the one that sort of got my grasp on it,” or it felt like it. In a lot of ways, all that was sort of being, I don't know, like threatened where it felt that way. So yeah, sort of like, that record's interesting. It's like an internal battle. It's a battle with like “The Man.” it's a battle with God. It's a battle, but mostly I think with myself, you know, like just sort of like reckoning with who I was becoming. It's like a weird birthing album in a way, to maybe a crazy person (laughs). 

“The Only One” 

I remember writing “The Only One” during the writing sessions, like everyone leaving the practice space, the warehouse room and the PA still being up. And I really loved when we would just have an active PA in a room, cause you could go and sort of like sampling something on a stage if you play it with some verb. And I knew we needed an opening song, like that was weirdly bouncing around in my head. And I'm fairly certain I ad libbed like almost all of the song, you know a rough very rough version of it, but all the way through the first time, it just sort of like came out in that way. Very open chord, we’d been working on this song “The River.” That's probably exactly what it was. Huh, you're making me realize this. So “The River” is in this weird tuning that i'm sure I didn't make up, but I don't know what it is. It was just this thing that I had stumbled upon that worked for this specific riff and it's a sort of very open C sharp across the board, so it's super kind of like kind of Gospel-y sounding. And so “The River” is this big kind of slow open chord song and “The Only One” I realized I could basically, you can fret the entire neck, all six strings, wherever, and it sort of plays like an open slide. And then I ended up using slide in the studio on that song. But yeah, I think I just started chugging along and then out came sort of those words. Which is how I felt at the time (laughs). It is exactly how I felt at the time, was that I was losing my mind and everyone was like, “No, it's going so great. You're on a major label. How could it go wrong?” 

“Shake It Out”

I knew that that song had a hold over me when I wrote the first riff, which is the easiest thing in the world, but it just felt mean. And I remember that song being like the loudest song that we had ever played in our rehearsal space, we never used headphones or in-ear monitors or anything like that, still don't use in-ear monitors, and I remember the guitar like being too loud. Which is very rare to happen, but it like actually rattling the inside of my brain. The lyrics of “Shake It Out” are kind of one of those, like, fall out of you and then later try and figure out what you're talking about songs. 

Yeah, I remember when we were at, like, one of the first times we sold out, like, Bowery Ballroom and me and Rob got out of the van and these two guys came up to us, they were so excited and they were like, “Dude, ‘Shake It Out,’ man. It's about, like, rippin’ beers, right?” I was like, “Yeah, for sure. It can be about whatever you need it to be about.” You know, I don't know. There's clearly a theme going on throughout the record and I look back on it and I find it really interesting, you know, there's a lot of like shaking and a lot of it's like descriptive of very specific moments, but it's cool that it's kind of had this like universal, I've met people that it means so many different things too. That's really cool. Some of my favorite lyrics and on that record too, that I've written, like I kind of, I thought I knew what they were about, but they ended up being about something very different. And so I used to feel like I was getting away with something, but now I've sort of just accepted it as like, man, you know, like it's sort of like bigger than me as just a person that's, you know, 37 years old now in Georgia. It's like, that just belongs to people who heard it. And when I've heard that people are like, so, can be or have been so like influenced or affected by it in a healing or powerful way. Yeah it's like, it doesn't really matter what I was thinking when I wrote it, you know? And the honest answer is I don't really know. I know what I think it means to me now, but I don't really know at the time. It's almost a stream of conscious, like it's a, yeah, it's like a, I don't know, an exorcism or something. It sounds like something's getting out, you know, then there's some healing. 

We really liked the idea of these continuing to switch rhythms, you know, looking back at it now, it's like taking lots of different catchy moments and having them together. But there was something so natural about it too. There were no rules to what the song should be. So for us, it's like the song's great when it feels great. And we'd had, we really liked that on the song, “I Can Barely Breathe” from the record before. There's lots of Manchester songs that like go places that aren't really like some traditional place that they should go, but they feel like that's where they should go. So we follow that, you know, there's no rhyme or reason why we drop a beat. It just felt right. I think dynamics were sort of the name of the game for us back then. You know, cause it was a lot of the earliest Manchester songs were like, just me playing something for three minutes, then huge ending. And so it was like, you know, how do we sort of become more of a rock band and less like singer songwriter with, you know, a heavy Pedro (the Lion) outro. It's very long, like the songs on this record are long and that just shows you how little we were really considering or caring about commercial success. It's like, what is the coolest record we can make? 

The outro, I do remember that, stumbling upon that lyric, the opening line of that and the band playing it. I'd been messing around with that sort of fingering of the guitar, those sort of chord shapes for a while. And once we were able to kind of put it with this, like these Sigur Rós chords backed with some, like, in our minds, like Mogwai or like, you know, just like huge doomy awesome thing. It did something for us, you know, it was like jangly, heavy rock, you know, mixed with like these celestial chords. And it was just a moment and we knew it was a moment. We played that song, that song and “In My Teeth.” We had, that had been like played a ton on the road, the two years, year leading up to recording the record. So we knew it was special. It could hold people's attention when, you know, they'd never heard it before. 

“I’ve Got Friends”

I remember TV on the Radio and just sort of always loving electronic music and, you know,  understanding what, you know, bands like Clinic and Hot Chip that was sort of of the era. And, you know, Radiohead was in a bit of like the electronic thing there, I guess In Rainbows had just come out, but still there were like flourishes of it, but TV on the Radio was the first like, “Whoa, this is like angry rock music, but has this element.” And so, you know, just, I think like anybody you like went and bought, you know, a bunch of weird little keyboards and start messing around. And we had always loved,  you know, all of us in our band were such big electronic music fans. We just didn't have the ability musically or the, you know, the kind of capacity to do anything outside of like. sampling or hip hop stuff. Where our drummer at the time, worked a lot as an engineer, for the Dungeon Family in Atlanta, sort of plugged into that scene. So we had that, you know, in our back pocket as well of like, “We need to sort of add this layer of this thing, but I remember TV on the Radio though, specifically in ‘08, whatever album of theirs that had just come out. I think, I can't remember, maybe Dear Science, but kind of going, “Oh, we should try and do our version of that thing,” you know, and then it's like anything on when you're making a record, you unlock something that then opens up this whole kind of view of what the future of the band can potentially be. You know, it's like, “Okay, cool so we now have that in our toolbox. Let's dive into that further at a later date.” 

“I've Got Friends” is very much like an anti “The Man” song, you know, like this is a, it's an inward song. It's very much like, “Who am I, who have I become, who am I becoming?” But yeah, it was sort of a protest song of like, it all seemed not that I haven't met wonderful people, lifelong friends through the industry of music. And there's, you know, tons of great people out there, but it all felt a bit like bullshit that there were like, you know, eight labels all of a sudden trying to sign us, telling me that I'm this and that it's like, you know, “I'm 19 years old, you're hoping I'm like this, but you're telling a bunch of other people the same thing.” You know, just sort of like very simply, “I got friends, you know, like here they are,” but it was the beginning of me realizing that like, “if I fail here like nobody cares.” This is you know, “I am one of many,” and it's something, you know, all artists sort of have to come to terms with it's like you can have a team working for you, but really no one is gonna care about this as much as you do. So it's sort of up to you to let that be, you know, enough. Specifically, I remember that like, “Dirtier the sound, the best I breathe. I tried to do it all for you, it didn't do anything for me.” It was like definitely this feeling of like, especially because they thought that was gonna be the single.  There was a little bit of a like, “Well, I'm going to scream the chorus then. So it can't be the single,” you know, like, “I'm not going to be your polished dancing monkey here. You know, here's the second Smashing Pumpkins guitar solo” (laughs). 

Oh my gosh, the arguments, you know, the first time I ever got yelled at by the label was during this record. And I think we're all like past it now that I can talk about it. But you know, I was, I didn't understand like really communication or how to do that very well. So when it came time to like for Joe to come back in town, I just like wouldn't answer, you know, and like, it would just be weeks of voicemails. And I just was doing the 21 year old thing, just like, “Don't look at it. Like, it'll go away.” You know, like it's fine. And I remember our label calling me and being on a three way call with our manager and going like, “What the fuck are you doing? Like this dude's calling you, we're paying him this.” I was like, “I'm working on the record.” We knew we had to fight our asses off to get this record to be what we wanted it to be. You know, we were sort of told in so many words from enough people that, you know, we can go make this weird record and it might not work, you know, or you can kind of polish it up and be something, you know, the label can work. And we were just so, like, “Obviously it's Door A. We haven't even let you work it to radio yet, like, we could give a shit if you drop us after this record. We do not care.” We really did not care. It was like we were going to make this record without them anyways. You know, so I think it definitely, when I look at that period of time, it's like back against the wall. Like all the fellas look at each other being like, “We're in this thing, let's do it!” And that was such a big thing to have, you know, my brothers at the time in the band, like we were focused, we believed in the vision, we knew what we were hearing and what we thought it could be. And I think, you know, we moved it along. I think Joe helped us make this incredibly concise, like live record. And then we kind of went in there and messed it up a little bit. And then he took all of the things that we'd added and mixed his incredible gift of mixing. And, you know, now listening back to it, it doesn't sound like half the stuff I was doing was like recorded poorly, you know, at three in the morning, not knowing what I'm doing, trying to get this weird, you know, background vocal or keyword part on it. 

I think “I've Got Friends” was clearly a good single because it worked, you know, and I think it was something that was the first sort of introduction to a wider audience for us, which is cool. It was the beginning of a whole kind of world of what radio was, which was weird and still is weird. It's just a total game and we didn't really understand that it was a game, how to play the game when it started. And I'm grateful for it. You know, we got to play that song on, you know, a bunch of cool late night shows. And I really like that song, I don't dislike it. I think we just played it every single show from like, ‘08 to 2018. So it's just taken a breather, but that just means we'll like it when it, when we get back to it. 

“Pride”

It's funny when I do interviews like this too, I'll like, I'll just say the honest answer and later be like, “You should have said the badass answer.” But the honest answer is, with “Pride,” I wanted to write a song that was as cool as that band Colour Revolt. Like, I just wanted to do that. It was incapable of that band to go on stage and play certain songs and it not be just like objectively badass. And that was something I, like, you know, I think everybody who has a guitar, there's a part of you that just wants to aim to like kick the ass of the person that you're playing music to in the best way. And that song just felt very stony. You know, it just, it was this like, on the record, it's just so unbelievably slow, which is awesome, and I'm glad it's captured that way. But really, I'm so grateful for that song, because that's just become, you know, speaking of overplaying, we've played that song more times than I can  believe, but it's evolved so much. The version of that song that we play now is almost a totally different version than what's recorded on the record. It's like, that song is almost like the, you know the old, like THX tuning thing. We're like, that song sort of like that in song form. It's like, it's a grounding. It starts very, at the bottom and it just sort of tunes itself. 

That was one of the few I remember doing with Joe Chiccarelli at Tree Sound in Atlanta and I broke a really nice microphone, I guess screaming too loudly into it. Yeah, that was like exhaustive, yeah, throat completely shredded, you know sort of giving it for that moment. I love how that vocal sounds on that. First of all, I didn't know how to sing. So that's a big part of it too. You know, like it's, I had learned how to sing from singing into bad sounding 57 and 58s, you know, across the world and small clubs, like even at that point, we played a couple of shows, you know, in bigger places, but always as opening acts, and it was always about just like wall of sound. And so when you're working with somebody like Joe Chiccarelli, and you could hear every little nuance of the voice that was intimidating. Now, to me, that's so exciting. Cause I feel like I have like, you know, control over my voice, but there wasn't a lot of control. And so I knew that a lot of the songs needed this, like we call it, the iron throat, like this tour voice you get where like, you might not sing the prettiest, but you can scream as much as you want. Your voice isn't going anywhere. You know, it's sort of like this perpetual sickness, it's not healthy (laughs), but it can be used as a tool. On top of that, smoking at least two packs of cigarettes a day and not really sleeping very much. I was working mostly through the night as Joe and the band would work during the day. I would work, you know, hours of like midnight to 10 a.m. until they'd get in the next day and then have to kind of sort through my madness. So yeah, a lot of the vocals were done at that time of night. Super sick, really raspy, and captured on these really, really nice microphones. So it has this, I love how my voice sounds on that record. I'm happy about that because it was a big, like, swing to be that unleashed, but I'm glad I did. I think it works. 

It's a little bit like the whole record. We're like going back and forth between all of these kind of snapshot moments of what my life was at that period of time. I remember writing a lot of that song in the dressing room attic area of St. Andrew's hall in Detroit, Michigan. Opening up for, Say Anything on tour with Biffy Clyro and Say Anything and Weatherbox and definitely a tour song in the first half of that. You know, it's, there's all sort of like these tour, life, marital, spiritual moments of sort of realizing the same thing, which is like, “Oh, no.” So, you know, like on the recorded version, that song also changes lyrics over time. I sing a lot different lyrics now than I did on the record, but I love the lyrics on the record. It's very much like, you know, “Is there a return here? We are out here just kind of killing ourselves for this, hundreds of shows a year. I wonder if it's going to be worth it.”

That was another song we'd been playing live a lot before we went into the studio to record it.  We used to play “A Hundred Dollars” to open up the show and then right when we’d finish “A Hundred Dollars,” we go right into “Pride.” I've always been a very big fan of like grungy and sludgy and discordant, yeah, the cool thing I do love about that song though is it's so grungy and it's all major chords. So it's kind of got this weird, it shouldn't be as nasty as it is thing going for it. But yeah, I think that was again like trying to add another tool to our toolbox of what we  felt we were capable of and wanted to like present, which is, you know, the song before we can play a radio show with Foster the People, you know, and then we can go play with Mastodon with this song. That was important, you know. 

“In My Teeth” 

I mean, clearly, you know, Pixies and Nirvana influenced, a little R.E.M. as well. That song came pretty easily to me in the bathroom of the house that I was living in, which is now the studio bathroom. And it lived, you know, in a folder for a while. That song was another one, so like “Shake It Out,” “Pride,” like a bunch of these songs. We had tested out of the road and they felt, you know, on the record, that one's probably one that feels a little tamer than if I, I wouldn't change anything if I could go back, but if I was me now, you know, it'd be a bit more like, “All right, this, we need more Nirvana, less R.E.M. here. But in the cohesiveness on the record, it plays this really nice, still has some shine to it, still has these, you know, intense vocals and still like keeps moving. And I remember like Chiccarelli wouldn't really comment on my lyrics. And so, you know, it's like, if somebody doesn't really give you a compliment, you hold on to the ones that you get. And he was never rude about my lyrics, but when I came up sort of as ad libbing and came up with the line, “What happens when I don't know what happens,” and repeated that during that section, like, “I'm going to try this out.” I remember him saying, “Oh, that's a very, very clever line.” So clearly, you know, I said, 15 years later, that's still stuck with me. He loves me. I promise. 

I think there's definitely a side narrator on the album. Yeah, there's two voices speaking to me for sure. You know, there's a lot of like there's one saying you're worth something and one saying you're worthless, you know, and they're sort of like battling each other. It's the “brothers with the, you know, tongues of knives.” It's like, it was about, you know, this darkness that I felt kind of creeping out and just like anybody I think too at that age with massive near crippling anxiety, lots of dreams about teeth and falling out and you know, so it was just this, I think a vivid imagery for me and it's one of those lyrics too I just have a few of them in the canon of Manchester that I thought about changing it. I tried to change it, but nothing else sounded right to me. And so I always just veer for, “Go with that thing and who cares what anybody thinks. 

And then I remember on the tour with Kings of Leon, and I would want to say like the winter of 2007, we're playing like these cold arenas in England. Just to show you how dire the tour was, I was recording some percussion on a demo that I was doing on that because there was nothing to do during the day. I had like GarageBand and recording, you know, the kick drum with my fist and there was no click track. So I just had to bang my fist for the kick for the whole song, for like all four minutes of it. And the tour was so depressing that our drummer Jeremiah thought that I was potentially nailing my head against a desk in the other room and came in to check on me after a minute and ruined the take. He was like, “Dude, I really thought you were maybe slamming your head against the desk” (laughs). That can’t be good.

“A Hundred Dollars” 

“A Hundred Dollars” serves to me, is like the end of side A. We were very conscious about there being two sides to this record. “A Hundred Dollars” is just a, you know, it's exactly sort of what it is. And also another example of like, we weren't concerned that it wasn't traditional. And I was shocked that people liked it so much, you know? It's like, I really loved it, but it was shocking. It took people a while, like our label didn't understand that song. Our manager at the time didn't understand it. It was his wife, actually, who, when he was listening to the, to the roughs, or like not, maybe not even finished, but Marie, bless her. She said, she's like, “Oh, the Manchester fans are going to love that song.” She was totally right. 

I think I've told the story many times before, but essentially, I'll tell it officially. I just started dating my wife. My dad was, pulled a very cool dad move, knew that she was home from college, I had no money, spots me a hundred dollar bill. It's like, “You guys go have like a fun day,” you know, “go have like a date day.” Such a cool move. And I was still on like good impression zone, you know, I was being like the best version of me to her and then yeah from the like walk to the kitchen of my parents house to the car, I lost the hundred dollars and like couldn't find it. Thus started now almost 20 years with her seeing me come to like near psychosis when I can't find something that I just had. Really weird trait for me, man. It's like all the therapy in the world can't help it. It's like, I go into some weird fight or flight. Clearly in my evolution, my timeline, there were people who really needed something and when they lost it, they got extremely stressed. But yeah, I just started like freaking out in the car, you know, like moving car seats harder than you need to move them, like, just not calmly looking for this thing and looking at her and her realizing like, “Oh, okay, so that guy's in there too.” And in a weird, I guess, Manchester way, it's, it's like a, it's a love song to it. You know, it's this like, it is very clearly saying, “I'm not doing very well” (laughs). 

We, I remember Joe trying to turn the end into sort of a big  celebratory thing. And then we had, you know, this, had a big like drum kit on it, a bunch of instruments come in and it was like this big, you know, “A Hundred Dollars” thing, sort of what, what we would maybe do live now on occasion. But it took away from it. Like it, you know, when it sounded craziest was when it was just me, with that electric guitar playing it live at Blackbird, you know, in the middle of the evening. I knew it didn't really need to be longer, but we definitely tried to like mess with the dynamics of it. And it's a good lesson in leaving it alone, that it needs to be kind of exactly what it was. And once we had our friend Erica (Froman) come in and sing some background vocals on it too, it had this sort of eerie male, female conversation thing happening, which is really cool. It's incredibly autobiographical. It's like, you know, I gave her this dog, Poncho. Poncho is still living, 15 years old. Shout out Poncho. Yeah, it's very much like early beginnings of marriage, not knowing where or how to find worth with each other and then proclaiming money will fix it while clearly it won't. 

“I Can Feel a Hot One” 

I remember when “I Can Feel a Hot One,” when I wrote it, knowing that it was special to me for sure. And Robert and I doing a demo of it in like the B room of Dan Hannon's studio. You know, with a song like “Shake It Out,” when that sort of comes out of you and you're like, I don't really know exactly what that is. This was an example of like, something coming out so rapidly, but I can really pinpoint every word of it and know exactly what I was talking about and was going through in that song. I find that like the connections with the other lyrics, it's really cool because they were all written sort of together and the lyrics were formed together. And in a lot of ways the record is like one lyrical song, but it wasn't like an intentional. Some were, but there's so many unintentional connections with the other songs on this, you know, and this was written, I guess, before it was released before on an EP. And so when we brought it in for the record, we added like some real strings and like a little bit of extra. But like, I fought for this to be on the record with our A&R and there was a little worry of like, “Do we want to repeat?” cause it's already out. But it just felt like such a tent pole of the record and sort of where we were. And I wish it didn't have so many lyrics so I could play it more. It's very hard to remember that one.  But I love that song. I'm really, really happy it's on there. And I think for a guy that didn't know how to sing, for that one like I was doing my best, you know. That's a pretty vulnerable spot to be to try and sing there and you know, that sounds like I was me. 

“I Can Feel a Hot One” is essentially for a long part of it's just an internal a conversation with me and so it's with me and Chris Freeman, who's the keyboard player in the band like, you know, we would do warm ups together in the van and just these like kind of quiet moments, like no dressing room, no place to feel peace. There's no peace in those periods of time. You're running purely on like adrenaline and willpower and hunger and just having complete full blown like anxiety attacks, you know, and that then manifesting itself into some types of depression. And I can tend to like overwork too when I'm depressed. And that's a place that I can kind of put, but that never manifests itself well, you know, as you learn throughout the years. And so, so much of that was just very very real. Had this vivid memory in my head, I was thinking about this like yesterday. And the reason I was thinking about it yesterday was because I was at my son's karate class and there's this woman talking on the phone directly next to me, like six inches from my ear. She's talking and this woman on my right side was like talking. And I find it a tad disrespectful to the karate instructors (laughs), who, it's a very quiet class and they're just like talking and I'm right in the middle of them. It's really one of those peak moments where I could like have a full blown panic attack. And I was thinking about how this is sort of what the beginning phases of tour is like. And I remember like thinking, “Well, how would we go to sleep?” You know, like the idea of me now not knowing like where I would sleep, if I would sleep would really stress me out. So like, there was all this like anxiety you weren't dealing with like foundational things, “Where will I sleep? What will I eat?” that kind of give you this piece. There's no piece. And so this memory I have is my friend, Spencer Ussery, who was selling merch for us on a tour. And it was like a 3am drive, you know, some terrible, like Colorado to Utah or Utah to Portland or something. Where like real men and women are made. Like turning to him, laying down in the back of the van and seeing his face down in a pillow, like screaming at the top of his lungs (laughs), cause he was losing his mind. And like, sort of, that's what the song is. It's like, it's a slow burning version of like, the band is listening to music too loud, you're trying to sleep in the back of the van, you're having an existential crisis and you're screaming as loud as you can into a pillow, you know, and you're still four hours away. 

Yeah, the drums part was completely original from Jer. He methodically played every hit separately and then constructed it. It's super methodical, it's tough for Tim (Very), our drummer now, he's an incredible drummer, but he'd even say it's, it's so reserved and just really well thought out. And so, yeah, you know, again, there's not a traditional song structure here, nothing repeats, you know, it's basically eight long verses outro. And so there was a lot of just delicate layering. When does this, you know, this is when the piano comes in, this is when the pump organ comes in. And if you looked at it as a, you know, files in the computer, you'd see it's like, you know, it's like sort of a pyramid that's going up, you know, in each, each turn around. Another little element being added, you know, and then, “Alright, once the kick hits, then that's when my higher harmony is going to come in.” And Dan Hannon, you know, really just taught me so much of what I know now of vocal arrangement and, you know, the difference between a harmony and a carmony, and a carmony is a harmony that shouldn't be on the record. You should just sing it in your car. You leave it to the people at home to sing it. You know, and how to be effective, just because you can do it doesn't mean it needs to be there. And so these were like, in my memory, man, these were really just learning times, I was a sponge trying to listen to everybody and figure out, you know, hope they didn't figure out that I was a complete imposter.  Meanwhile, the truth was I was making a great record, but you don't know that back then. 

Man, like when we did the rough of that song, like before it was ever mixed, but it was tracked, I would cry every time on that final line. It just like moved me. I knew what I meant, it was real, I still mean it. Powerful moment that, you know, I just hold onto and I'm grateful that that song was given to me. 

Well, “I Can Feel Hot One” began, you know, a long, odd list of times I talked about having a daughter before having children. Always dreamed that I was gonna have a daughter. Always would write songs about having a daughter. Almost every record. “Like a Virgin Losing a Child,” very like, there's lots of little girl, you know, in the sleeper song, “little girl by your side.” Yeah, always this thing. And then, it's bizarre. Yeah then here comes my daughter, you know, in 2014, and it just adds this like, this wild weight to it. So, you know if I say I don't really know what it's about because like I don't really know yet. There could still be some things that you know to unfold. But yeah, just like I felt I legitimately felt the love of this like unborn, wouldn't be born for six years, seven years, like child. It's wild, you know, so it carries a whole other meaning to it. I think that was manifest in just how much I loved my wife. And so with a record that carries a lot of struggling and hard questions and sort of like the rumblings to what would eventually be like kind of the explosion of our marriage for like a year, there's also these like, these tender moments of like, not to jump forward, but I remember playing her the demos for them early and the line in everything to nothing (“The River”), “I'm going to leave you the first chance I get.” And having to explain to her like, “That line is not about you.” I'm happy. I'm happy for a dark record that there is this like glimmer of hope that's sitting right there. 

“My Friend Marcus” 

Song came together just way too easy. Like it just came out. I remember having fear about some of that. As I'm going in to make another very, you know, long process of a record in the next couple months, I'm sort of going through all this, so it's interesting to do this now. And just trying to remind myself of certain things, you know, like, “Don't be weary of something that comes really easily. Just because it came easy doesn't mean that it's not worth it. That's okay. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy to record,” but like, “allow things to be that. You're going to be,” you know, I have to remind myself, I'm going to be enough, the hardest critic. So if you feel something's great and it came, walk away and analyze it later, you know. But like, don't try and I think doing all those takes on this record probably, it's taken me a while to get back to that, like man, sometimes the first take was the best take and that's okay. So “Marcus” felt like that. It was like I can listen to the first demo, I don't think there was a demo, an acoustic demo for that song. I think there was the riff. And then we wrote that song in about 45 minutes and not a ton changed. 

I remember the lyrics of that song and “My Friend Marcus” were, I could tell they were like striking a chord. A friend of mine, Harrison Hudson, asking me, “Is that song about me?” And it kind of broke my heart because I was like, “Oh man, like, I hope not, but gosh, like, if that, if it's making you feel that way, then like, yeah.” I don't know. It was mind blowing to me at that period of time, that words that I was saying were making people feel a certain way, much less like helping them heal. That was sort of the first little inclination of like, “Huh, I wonder if people will relate to this.” You know, in my opinion, the song's about an abused kid and the kid being taken into another house, and the sort of entitled, the entitled kid that took them in, you know, starts feeling a certain way about this sort of like, attention that this person's getting and meanwhile the person that actually has, you know, all the things to complain about and all of the pain is like trying to do something with their lives and moving on and trying to be better. You know, meanwhile, the kind of fortunate person is sitting around, waiting for stuff to come to them like it always has. So it's a bit of like an analogy song, you know, 

Built to Spill, you know, that's my favorite band. So that was, “How do we make something that feels like that?” My friend, Dan Gleeson going, “That's the, that is the most Manchester Built to Spill song I've ever heard.” I was like, “Good, it's working.” It's certainly some Pinkerton in there too. I think it's Built to Spill meets Pinkerton, you know, a little bit of Granddaddy, but very Pinkerton on the key change, like, you know, “Let's like do this thing.” And power chords and the big chorus, you know. I wear those influences proudly. I'm not who I am without those records. So anytime they can seep in, I give my due. 

“Tony the Tiger” 

I remember writing “Tony the Tiger” at the Beaumont Club in Kansas City. Another example of like not having a dressing room. And so you just sort of have your guitar, you just sit outside the venue or, you know, you're like a first of four bands, just like sit in the van. And it was just this very kind of calm, I wrote it on this electric guitar on this tiny little, you know, like one of those tuning amps that our tech had, like, you know, like a one six-inch speaker. And I liked it. It just felt kind of peaceful. Then once I brought it to the band, Jeremiah added this very cool. We were big fans of Pinback and loved, there was a bit of like this hip hop element, this pocket that was there and these muted guitars. And so it was one of those songs that just sort of, as we jammed it further and further, it became what it became. It's really, they were like early stages of realizing that little ideas on a tiny little speaker that would normally just kind of be a folk song that maybe I put over here to the side for another project could like start to turn into something. 

Yeah, I mean it's intentionally vague. It's like a really kind of it's the same car ride that like happens in the song “Leaky Brakes.” So it's like very kind of like tied to this period of time and “Leaky Brakes” is the final song on the next album Simple Math. So yeah, it's another one where I don't  think I know anymore what it's about. I've heard so many different people have so many opinions on this song that I don't want to like screw it up. And also the the personal nature of it was like a very, I think everybody was catching strays from me on that one (laughs), to be honest. It wasn't like a, wasn't necessarily one individual person that I'm talking to throughout that song. Yeah, I think just a feeling of like, I think the line, “I didn't think that you would actually do it,” felt pretty global to me, of some kind of level of like distrust, disappointment, you know. Like, “Didn't think that would actually happen,” you know. I find, man, that when I am least worried about how it's going to sound to people and I am more true to what I'm actually feeling and what I actually believe, regardless of what I'm writing about, it tends to connect with people more , over and over and over and over again. So it's a little bit, I have a bit of like, “I'm not even going to get in the way of that. I'm going to be grateful that that thing has happened and then it has affected this person.” And, you know, I don't want to like say, “It's about this,” and then it's ruined for somebody, you know? I'm such a fan of Doug Martsch's lyrics in Built to Spill, and it's fascinating to hear him talk about them too, because he's just sort of like so, sort of like, they're genius to me in every way, but when I've heard him speak about them, it's very like, “I don't know, like I don't really think about lyrics. I like to write, you know, I really like writing hooky music, you know, but I don't really like instrumental music, so I figured they need like a vocal.” It's like, “That's amazing,” you know, and I don't need those lyrics to mean something else to him for what they mean to me, and that's sort of the beauty of music. So, and yeah, like I love writing detailed stuff and for me, it's really fun to listen back cause it's, you know, I'm hearing, you know, actual moments, you know. 

And there was a chemistry that we had from playing all those shows together that when, you know, the five of us were playing in a room, there was really cool stuff that was happening. Everybody was playing instinctually. I don't know if we were listening to each other (laughs), but amazingly, yeah, we were like able to make a pretty cool sound. And that song was a great one. Another example of like playing to the band is the final chorus on “Tony the Tiger.” I always thought it should have this kind of like back, you should go, “(sings rhythm) “da da da da da da dum ba dum,” not on the one. And a great example of me and Jeremiah's discussions about certain things, I'd tell him this idea and he'd like hear it and try it and hear it and try it and hear it and try it. And then he'd look at me and be like, “It's never going to happen.” So like, “The song has got to be this way.” And now it lands on the one. And then the whole song kind of now falls on the one at the end, which is awesome. It's like a great change that, a lot of like cool moments like that happened just because, you know, of what we had and what we were working with.

“Everything to Nothing”

The musicality of that song was like very, you know, it sort of had the tight feel we liked from “Tony the Tiger,” but we love sort of these big expansive chords. Like it almost felt like we were navigating a line of like, “I don't know, like, does this go too Creed? Does this go, you know, does this go Creed enough? Do we need more Creed?” I wanted it to be like Neil Young, you know, like Z by My Morning Jacket. Like there's so many things we wanted to like try and explore, we just like, it wasn't time and we didn't know how. So like, it's cool on this record, little things that poke out, you know, the electronics on “Friends,” you know, the doom of “Pride,” these cool like choral moments here or there. It's like, you can tell we're like, “We're getting to it. We're getting around,” and I mean, I think we're still getting to it trying to figure it out. So I think you know, it was, you said earlier it's like, you know, “It's a record full of big swings,” that didn't even feel like a big swing, it's like, “Why would we not have this cool solo section with two dueling guitar solos? You know, that's something like Weezer would do. It's something, you know, Built to Spill would do. It's something My Morning Jacket would do. Let's do it. Why not?” And I think the way that it was recorded, it was just so beautifully done. Strings as well on that one, which was, I think pretty much all the strings were just cello that were played at different octaves, but like this kind of gorgeous suite. And those songs, I remember coming out like very, very  autobiographically while writing that song. A lot of times on this record in particular, there were moments where I would say something when we were doing rehearsal and I would stop and write down what I just said and kind of analyze that and try and figure out how, what that meant. It was very, a lot of this is subconscious. And that's what's interesting to like, look at it all now, you know, as you play them live, you're like, “Whoa, you know, I totally understand what I was meaning by that,” but everything felt so foggy at the time. I'm not sure I knew. 

I think it's allegorical of like, you know, realizing that the people that you look up to that are just like, they're instated as  complete authority and you know no different. And it's sort of a wink at, you know, realizing that these people are human beings and it's not even understanding the next layer of it. Really, it's just more like, “Whoa,” like, you know, like the first time you see your mom cry. You're like, “Whoa, you know, you have emotions?” (laughs). You know, like it's, when you see the humanity. Yeah, I think that that song specifically that particular song on the record's like, you can hear I'm scared, you know about what's happening and where it's going. It's funny. I keep wanting to say they all feel so connected to me and they are, I mean, they're purposefully, I just guess I haven't analyzed it like this in quite a while. But they're all like, they're all sort of barking up the same tree from different angles. 

But I had come up with that phrase of the, the, “You mean everything, you mean everything to nothing, you mean everything to nobody but me.” And then I knew, “You mean everything to nothing,” was an interesting line. And then as I was thinking about the album title, obviously like chopping off the, “you,” and then all of a sudden it became this like instruction. And then I think, you know, I really got attached to the idea of like, “That's the meaning of the record is like, so almost like a, the getting rid of yourself like in, and not in a fatalistic way, but like the hope is to not mean everything to anything. Like, don't be that, like be less.” I don't know, that was sort of the mantra of it, like getting all of this out. This clear angst, pain, like rage at times was a way of like, I don't know, removing myself from it and like letting it be what it is, which I think is eventually, you know, like covered in “The River,” the final song, sort of like, a baptism from all of it, just sort of like a, “I am now walking away moment.” And like leaning in on love rather than people or substance or sex, or whatever that thing is. 

“The River” 

I wrote the lyrics to that one on this, like, clothes box. You know, they're like, something to come in from, like, H&M wasn’t around back then, but somewhere, like, this white box, because there was no paper around, and I wrote it in Sharpie. And it stayed there, which was good because it just stayed around in the closet where I was writing music and I would see it and remember it. And it was, you know, I had invented my own, which I'm sure is something, tuning where I was tuning the  E string down to C sharp. So everything was like D sharp standard, so I tune the E string down to a C sharp, and I tune the high E and B also to a C sharp, and I'm pretty sure I turned the G down to F sharp, maybe? I don't know. It was really just done on like, ear. And then, same way with “The Only One,” I realized that I could do sort of a full fret, every finger on the fret. And then so with “The River,” the last two strings sort of give each other, they're the same note. So I'm playing this like little lick that's happening, but it's actually two notes, two strings, tuned the exact same, playing the same thing. So it gives it this kind of cool chorus-y effect. 

The lyrics were based on the hymn, “Come Thou Fount,” and there's this old story and I don't know if it's true or not, but I remember hearing one time about the guy who wrote that song. And the legend says that years later, you know, there's a woman on this bus, this old, like uptight British lady on a bus, and she's singing that song and this like disheveled, you know, alcoholic, bearded nightmare. Sounds a lot like me during this record. But was like, you know, told her to shut up, you know, “Don't sing that song's terrible.” And she scowls at him and tells him, you know, he would have no idea, you know, what this song is saying. And he's like, “I wrote the song,” and he did. And apparently the life of that guy who wrote “Come Thou Fount” was like very turbulent and brutal. And I think a lot of the songs that you will find in the Christian history are really old and they are all written from like deep pain where there is nothing else to do but just like bow down to a higher power. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing and they feel extremely real and raw and, to me, those words in that song always felt like how I felt with my faith, which was, you know, prone to wander, I think that it goes, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” And it's like, “Yeah, that's exactly right.” You know, like I'm, “and God, the right thing,” what your conscience is telling you, like all of that being the thing that I'm talking to on this record of like doing the right thing, that's what it is. And it's like, I am prone to leave that thing every day. That's, you know, that's sort of all you want to do. And I felt a deep connection to that song, and so I sort of penned my own tribute to that. 

I think fully going for it is right, you know, it was like, “This is going to be big.” You know, these are big, open, drop C sharp chords and we got the piano and we got, you know, it's just, it felt very similar to “Only One,” which I think why it made such sense in very different songs, but it made sense in sort of bookending this record with it. Cause it was just very straightforward. Like, here is exactly what it is and we are going to sing it, you know, as loud and as best as we can. And, you know, for me, I've always just felt like endings of albums, yeah, I just, they deserve it. It's like, this is the final track, you know, however, that's going to manifest itself. So I don't think we had much trouble with this one, man. It was pretty like, I remember adding the strings and the piano and these moments of like the quietness. I remember even from the demo, that like quietness right before, “I'm going to leave you the first chance I get,” and then boom, bashing in. It just felt like a powerful, powerful moment. 

After this whole sort of doubting, questioning, unhinged album, it was like, yeah, this like, this final hymnal of like, “I know I felt this connection to a higher power and to love in my life. Where is that?” You know, it's sort of an invitation of being like I am and that song, man, actually now I'm thinking about it, that song was invented like the very, “the river” part was invented because I would open shows like that in like 2007 in 2008 when we'd be in the middle of like a gnarly tour and we'd open with a song, “Collie Strings,” which was also in the same-ish tuning and I would sing that opening like, “Oh God, I need it. Let me see again and take me to the river, make me clean again,” you know. And so obviously, “The River’s” you know a bit of a wink to old, you know, gospel songs and this idea of baptism and being cleansed and obviously there's like biblical connotations in it, too. But yeah, also, you know, my grandfather was a big tent revival minister, it's like that was like, those were river baptism people so there's also a little bit of this like, I don't know sadistic wink in that too. That it's, you know, also going like, “This is how I know how to talk about it so, you know, here's the language for it.” And it's also the like, “Let's go down to the river to pray.” You know, like there's all these just sort of like, my son's name is River. That is the grand finale here. So like, yeah, it's, the word means a lot to me. You know, it represents a lot. 

I will be honest, I believe that this thing was sequenced like from the jump. I don't think there was ever any doubt where any of these songs were going even before we tracked the record. Like, we knew it was going to be this. We also knew that with “A Hundred Dollars” being the one withstanding, but those 10, they were going to be in that order. And really it was nine because “I Could Feel a Hot One” was done. So it was like those nine songs. We knew “Hot One” would be seven/eight-ish. That was like where it should land and then I did a few different acoustic songs during those sessions and “A Hundred Dollars” ended up being, you know, kind of the clear cut, “This is like our centerpiece.” 

“Jimmy, He Whispers” 

“Jimmy, He Whispers,” it's funny because it was the last of a dying thing that, that hidden track, but basically for those who don't know, you know, on a CD, you could fit like 80 minutes of music. So we did, I think a four or five minute break. We've always loved the Easter eggs. So we printed, I remember the CDs, we printed the lyrics to “Jimmy” on the inside of the insert. So like, you'd have to look in where the CD was to actually see them and tear it apart to read the lyrics. And since then, you know, I guess if I could do it back, I wouldn't do it any different, but it really does feel, I don't know, it feels like a spaceship comes and like takes the lead character away and then you're looking over everything that's just happened. Very like raw and vulnerable song, don't listen to it a ton, but I'm grateful it's there. And I will say when we did our 10 year anniversary, we did a couple of shows doing Mean Everything to Nothing, front to back. It was such a, you know, like live, it was the perfect song to play last. I was very grateful for it. I was like, “Oh man, this is right.” So I'm happy that it's in the canon of the album. Now that digital is here, it works. 

I got this phone call from my friend, Jimmy Cajoleas, a very well accomplished author now. At the time, was guitar player in the band Colour Revolt, the band from Oxford, Mississippi. And he called me, this is old touring days. He's like, “Hey, I just woke up from this dream. And the dream was that me and you were in this car and we were on the way to listen,” he was in Utah. He's like, “I just woke up at this hotel floor in Utah. And we were on the way to this lake to hear the voice of God whisper. And we were both terrified about what he was going to say. All right, man, have a great day. Talk to you later.” It was like the first thing I heard when I woke up.  And then I immediately, yeah, went into like the closet room where a lot of these songs were originally written and started writing that song. He'd been such a great like kind of brother to me, spiritual mentor, musical life, great friend to me, very accepting and encouraging of me. This song kind of fell out and I sent him the demo and I didn't think that this song really like made any sense on this record. And I'll give, Steve Ralbovsky, our A&R, a ton of credit to that. He was like, “This song's important. I don't want it to get, be forgotten.” It had struck a chord with him and I trusted him. He wanted us to make the right record for the right reason and he ended up fully, you know loving and endorsing this album and helping us get there. That production is is really really cool and far advanced of what we were able to really even do at that time. Like, you know, that was kind of the sound you'd like hear in your head, but have no idea how to manifest it. That was Chris and Joe, they would spend sessions, couple hours with each other, going through sound banks and whatever we were using at the time, and finding certain things that just kind of like would delicately pepper it in. And that one feeling like a siren. Just was like such an immediate, like, “Oh yeah, man. Wow. You know, the gravity.” And just such a lesson too of like how a little thing can affect something, you know, that I think we've learned now through through scoring and obviously making a bunch more records, but those little details, man, like on a record full of of really big goals and, and swings and hits or misses, however you look at it,  there is this really cool attention to the quiet parts of it that, you know, we definitely knew were equally as important. So it's, I feel like, I enjoy listening back to this record. If it comes on, it's, there's always like something interesting to hear in it. 

It felt really scary when it was finished. I mean, you know, so we finished with Joe and then we basically worked on it for another two months with Dan Hannon and then took it to L.A. to mix and then fondly look back at the mixing process of it of just like, man, all these hardships and all these like tensions paid off. A really, really cool moment for me, so like Pinkerton, I've mentioned it a bunch of times and Joe Ciccarelli, I'd said it to him a bunch of times when we were making the record, obviously talking about influences and he said, “Well, you know, I'm good friends with Matt Sharp. I've worked on a bunch of the Rentals stuff. I was like, “Dude, Matt Sharp's the G.O.A.T. Like, that's insane.” It's like, “I'm going to get him to come by the studio and like, hear some stuff when we're mixing at Sound City.” And comes in and he heard like “Marcus,” which was, I mean, I was like, “He's going to know we're just ripping off Pinkerton here.” And then I think “I've Got Friends.” And he, I remember him going, “That was an epic mindfuck!” And I remember thinking like, “Who cares what anybody else thinks?” like, “That is, that's all I needed to hear right there.” It was like the a dude who massively inspired what we just did, pat me on the shoulder and say, “Job well done.” Then which started this kind of awesome friendship with him throughout the years so that's a really really fond memory I have of that too, feeling validated, you know of like, “Am I nuts? Is this any good?” Yeah, I had no idea. I know that the people I was playing it for that I trusted said that it was really cool. It was my first lesson in like having a grand vision in your head and not, what I've realized now is you never will attain that because it is imaginary and doesn't exist. It is simply like an aiming spot for what you're going for. And it's the goal is now, you aim as high as you can, but you don't beat yourself up for not like somehow miraculously creating the perfect image of what this record needs to be in your head. It just won't happen. So I think it was one of those moments of kind of like learning to live with that too. Like, “Huh, I spent eight months on this. I don't think it's exactly what I thought it was going to be.” And then learning that, that's okay. You know, like there's, it seemed to have a great impact with people. I mean, gosh, it was like definitely the record that helped us move, you know, up a few steps. And I think we accomplished what we needed to, which was, you know, make a record that  for people that loved our first one, you know, it'd be hard for them to decide which one they they liked more and I think we we stomped it. I do love the first record too. But yeah, I'm really proud of it. I think once I realized that it was pretty well received, I immediately started worrying about the next record and that's sort of how it's always gone, you know, just like it was as if the door was closed and like, “Oh boy. All right. Well, what do we do for the third one?” You know, “How do we pivot from here? How do we take what we've learned? How do we continue?” 

I look back on Mean Everything to Nothing fondly. I think it's like any experience that you have that was really difficult at the time, but you look back and kind of only remember the fun parts. Yeah but then when you go to, go do it again, you remind yourself of the things you want to do differently so you have more fun next time. It's definitely a time capsule of a bunch of hungry young gentlemen trying to make a really loud sound. And you know, the further I get away from it, the happier I get that I was really earnest and open on the album. I think it's just allowed me to feel even more freedom. To be able to use, you know, the best gift that I have, which is, you know, the ability to take emotions and frustrations and difficulties in life and like put them into art, which then amazingly, miraculously, you know, can turn into a positive thing. So I think this is probably step one for old Andy on figuring out what that's all about with this record.  

Outro:

Dan Nordheim:

Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Manchester Orchestra. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Mean Everything to Nothing. Instrumental music by Mt. Oriander. Thanks for listening. 

Credits:

“The Only One”

“Shake It Out”

“I’ve Got Friends”

“Pride”

“In My Teeth”

“100 Dollars”

“I Can Feel a Hot One”

“My Friend Marcus”

“Tony the Tiger”

“Everything to Nothing”

“The River”

“Jimmy, He Whispers”

Favorite Gentlemen/Canvasback

© & ℗ 2009, Sony Music Entertainment

Mean Everything to Nothing was written by Manchester Orchestra in January, March, April and August of 2008 and recorded between September and November of 2008.

© 2008 Chrysalis Songs / Good Things, Bad People Music (BMI)

Produced by Joe Chiccarelli in conjunction with Dan Hannon and Manchester Orchestra

The Process included:

-Pre-production rehearsals at Vision Studios in Chamblee, GA

-Initial tracking at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, TN with engineering assistance by Lowell Reynolds

-Overdubs at Tree Sound Studios in Norcross, GA with engineering assitance by Ryan Hobbs

-Overdubs at Vintage Song Studios in Alpharetta, GA with help from Matt Young, Lane Johnson and Megan O’Connell

-Mixing at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood, CA by Joe Chiccarelli with engineering assistance by Bill Mims

-Mastering at Sterling Sound in New York City, NY by Ted Jensen

-Additional engineering by Dan Hannon and Brad Fisher

Additional Musicians featured on the album include:

Dan Hannon: Additional Guitars and Keys

Oliver Kraus: Cello and Violins

Erica Froman: Additional Vocals

Mary Alice Hull: Handclaps and Vocals

Episode Credits: 

Intro/Outro Music:

“You Chip Away Everything that isn’t an Elephant” by Mt. Oriander

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam