This is beginning to get faintly ridiculous now. Yes, so the internets may have made everyone everywhere virtual next door neighbours, we get that, but it’s all so bloody misleading. Joining the roll call of certified non-geographers Architecture In Helsinki, Alabama 3 and I’m From Barcelona (no you’re frigging not!) are Manchester Orchestra, from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. You know, where REM come from, where rain macs are – as far as we understand it – rarely worn proud. They do carry with them a serious air of gloom though, we’ll give them that. They are not an orchestra either, be assured of that. When they say ‘orchestra’ what they mean is ‘emo 5-piece with mildly loftier ambitions’. Next you’ll be telling us the Glastonbury Town Band is a spoon player from Connecticut. Or Basildon.
Were Manchester Orchestra not a bit of alright, we may have continued whinging around this subject for the entire review. Lucky for them that they are, a bit that is. The band and album centre around the warm songwriting of Andy Hull (there’s another gloomy British Town, that would have done – they only have the Beautiful South and The Paddingtons to their name), which is exactly where the focus gravitates, checking back in either side of any blunt doling out of power chord riffage. This is a collection of structured soundscapes first and an emo record second, resulting in a palatable record of reasonable depth.
‘Golden Ticket’ bobs along like Death Cab For Cutie on a temperate current somewhere above the amplification of the Foo Fighters, ‘Sleeper 1972’ strips things back yet further, emitting soft-brushed reflections over a bed of organ, evoking a brooding Conor Oberst, an impression repeated with yet more clarity on the brief, beautiful ‘Don’t Let Them See You Cry’ and gradual, gathering highlight ‘Colly Strings’, prior to its epic, climbing Wilco-esque close. Things are a little dulled in places, over 12 tracks the texture can get predictable and it’s cursed on occasion by the generic pleading emo-vocal, but Atlanta Emo 5-Piece With Mildly Loftier Ambitions carry just enough (though not a drop more) in the way of ingenuity and tenderness to counteract that.