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Album Review: Manchester Orchestra - A Black Mile To The Surface

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"... As brittle as it is powerful."

More Manchester Orchestra Manchester Orchestra Profile

Just 13 years into an already enviable career, Andy Hull and Robert McDowell are captaining Manchester Orchestra's fifth through troublesome waters.

Scoring the Danno/Radcliffe vehicle Swiss Army Man using mostly a cappella and minimal orchestral sounds has reinvigorated the band's love of its guitar section, which is delicately draped over Hull's fragile vocals in The Parts and scalds with Foals-ish intensity on The Silence. When The Grocery wanders from a grey apartment block in search for a higher power to believe in it's hard to imagine this is a band from Atlanta, Georgia not Brexit-wounded Blighty. A Black Mile To The Surface is as brittle as it is powerful.