Manchester Orchestra - A Black Mile to the Surface (July 28, 2017) Album • Page 162

the last third is out of this world godly good, and the first two thirds are incredible

 

I mean, when it comes down to it, it's just a matter of opinion. With that said, I feel it's one of their most powerful songs and it makes me feel happy/hopeful. A lot of their biggest songs have a meloncholic nature (which I love) but The Grocery just makes me feel good haha

 

Random thought regarding the mistake/ moving out. Sorry if this has been brought up, but does Anyone think it's an intentional nod? I mean the first line of moving out is "Anthony worked at a grocery store." Kind of a cool coincidence if anything else

 

I have no idea how this could be happening to so many people. Are there that many malicious USPS delivery people out there? Or is it on the distributor's end?

 

Good stuff. Having brothers in the story and the time jump makes a lot of sense, but I agree I wish Andy would just tell us what the hell is going on.
Before I found out Pleasant Hill was a road in Lawrenceville I went pretty far down the wrong rabbit hole researching the city of Pleasant Hill. I noticed on Wikipedia one of the notable people from there was the creator of LSD (Lead,SD). His most popular version of it was called Orange Sunshine, and a documentary was made called The Sunshine Makers. I was like eureka! This must be a connection. Lol, I was way off base.
I don't usually dig into albums this much trying to figure out the meaning. Maybe just being a father of little girls who had an abusive alcoholic father I'm really connecting to it on a personal level.
On Saturday evening my oldest daughter suffered a pretty bad head injury. I spent a lot of the time in the hospital just listening to this on repeat trying to decipher its meaning to keep me distracted. I couldn't help feeling responsible and that I had failed as parent just like my father. Even though it was just a freak accident, and no one was to blame. I've never had such an emotional connection to an album before.
Thankfully they say my daughter shouldn't have any permanent damage with the exception of a few wicked scars.

 

From who's perspective does everyone think "The Silence" is from? Is it the wife of the father of the brothers or the wife or girlfriend of one of the brothers? It seems whoever it is at some point is speaking to their little girl.

Who does everyone think did the shooting in the grocery? Do you think it was the brother from "The Alien" or someone else? I feel personally that it's wrong to believe the brother from "The Alien" did the shooting because he seemed to feel guilty about the deaths he caused from walking into traffic, unless the word "traffic" is not referring to cars on the highway, but for those people inside of the grocery.

An extension of my last question, but who believes the brother from "Lead" is the brother who did the shooting and why? I believe he didn't and was simply shot and fell into the family planning aisle which happened to be the very thing he was fearing, fatherhood. Also, he overhears the shooter saying the same line from the beginning of "The Grocery" that was presumably said by the shooter.

Curious what conclusions others have drawn from the story and how the songs tie together. I know how easy it is to overlook something and want to know what others are thinking and see if there is something I'm missing.

 

I need to sit with this record and have the lyrics on hand. I'm dying to understand the story underneath, or at least create my own idea of what it all means.

 

I gotta be honest, I've listened to this album probably 20 times start to finish and I'm not picking up on any of these storylines. I also haven't read any lyrics though. I stopped reading lyrics about a decade ago so normally takes me longer to memorize/fully understand lyrics now.

Maybe I'm just dumb?

 

Awesome! That's also the basic theme of Joel's Movin' out. Working yourself to death just to gain material objects. Not sure if there is an actual connection with The Mistake, but that might make sense.

 

I absolutely do not mean to burst any bubbles. I think it's awesome how dedicated you guys are. But maybe it's not all connected? From what I gathered it seemed like Andy abandoned the full story concept album halfway through and what we got was a mix of some of the fictional stories with some of his thoughts and his life.

 

Idk the only thing I've scene is that he threw away the idea of two rivaling brothers but i still think there is a clear story. I think the songs may not necessarily be in chronological order and some of the songs that are clearly about his personal life are also meant to fit into the story.

 

This album got me going back to Mean Everything to Nothing as well

Goddamn I love that album too. These guys kind of lost me with Simple Math and Cope (though I did really like Hope) but I should definitely revisit both asap

 

I've been in kind of a dark place lately and this album is really taking me on a ride. It's making me feel emotions and the only other album so far this year that has done that is After Laughter.

I love how cohesive and thought out this album is. As soon as I start The Maze there is no stopping, I'm going straight through to The Silence.

 

METN is one of my top 5 albums of all time, and I think this is far and away the best thing this band had done. Crazy how much this album means to me already

 

I played this in the car for my girlfriend today, and she loved it. It always makes me happy when she is just as stoked about an album as I am.

 

Separating the two brothers and the part each plays are the key to understanding most of the story that is here I think. If the brother from "Lead" is also the "Alien", does that just leave the other brother as our window into this story? And if so does he have a kid that he is speaking to in "The Silence"? Also, if the brother in Lead and Alien are one in the same and let's say there are in fact two separate tragedies, then why did he shoot up a grocery store after already feeling guilty about the traffic accident he caused. I mean it's easy to say he was just crazy, but I'd like to think there is more to it and that we are just missing something. And the "You are the blood in my blood, you pretender. It took your blood on my blood to believe" makes me wonder if the shooter shot his brother or as you said, shot his father.

It seems like "The Silence" is from the perspective of a woman because of the line "That was something your father had burned in me," as she is presumably speaking to her daughter. Either that or the song switches between perspectives.

My thoughts on this are so jumbled and all over the place so I apologize if what I'm saying is not reading like I'm wanting it to. And @BoldTitan, while the story may end up not being as complete as I think it is, there is definitely more tying most of these songs together than just a theme. I can see how you would feel the way you do about it though.

 

I went to the Best Buy off of Pleasant Hill today to get my computer fixed and decided it would be an appropriate place to buy a physical copy of A Black Mile to the Surface and they didn't have it. What a missed opportunity.

A couple days ago two of my good friends (who love Manchester Orchestra) told me they were driving on Pleasant Hill and having a serious conversation about issues in their families when they noticed Andy singing in the background, "You forced the traffic to erase your family demons." So many cool things like that have happened with that song. There's a stretch of road right off the exit that's notoriously backed up and it's awesome to be able to visualize that stretch knowing it might actually be the same thing Andy visualizes when he sings that line.

That's such a small thing to dwell on and I know no one here cares like I do, but it's so freakin' cool to hear my hometown and an obscure road I drive on almost daily given a shoutout in what's quickly becoming a landmark album for me. This record could have been absolute crap and those mentions would still be rad, but this is objectively the best thing I've listened to all year.

 

The guitar sounds so...toothless on this. It's a shame because I do like it quite a bit. If only it sounded like MEtN, heh.

 

Eh.

 

i like that this album tries to make guitars sound interesting instead of boring

 

2:37-3:22 on Lead, SD make me feel like I'm in heaven

 

Yeah that's how I feel too. Either way, I'll still look at it as a complete concept album because having half the songs be super high concept but incomplete and then the other half having nothing to do with them would actually lessen my opinion of the record. Like I said before though, it's abstract enough to invite your own interpretation which is why I'm glad Andy hasn't just explained everything. It makes it more interesting.

 

Took me a few listens but listening to this late one night and I finally 'got' it. As a cohesive album it's a stunning piece of work, and also tracks like The Parts and especially The Silence are mindblowingly good. The Silence has to be one of the best closers ever, and that run of three songs at the end is just too amazing. There have been a lot of great albums this year and even over the last couple of years, but I'm struggling to think of anything that is better than this. Obviously time will tell if I still feel this way in a few months, but getting serious Devil and God vibes from this at times.

 

This seems like a pretty bad take to me.

 

That's it! The silence is where they travel back 100 years and it's from the perspective of the abandoned mother. 20 hours out of homestake eternity.. could be wrong but andy said in the middle of a song they jump back to that timeline.. I've been trying to find out where else it would be