BREAKING OUT

Chris Freeman, Andy Hull, Robert McDowell, Jeremiah Edmond, and Jonathan Corley, photographed for SPIN in Brooklyn, New York, March 4, 2009

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA

Earnest Atlanta indie rockers combine Pinkerton heft with ruminations on faith

Tucked into a booth behind a plate of snow crab legs and a cold beer at a cavernous fish house across from Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery, Manchester Orche­ stra frontman Andy Hull is talking about one of his favorite subjects: God.

“There’s a difference between peo­ ple who use God as a way to sleep at night and people who are so convicted by their beliefs that they can’t,” says Hull, 22. “I’m in category two.” Hull’s father and grandfather were pastors, and in Manchester Orchestra, he’s teamed with four guys who also grew

up in Christian homes. “But we’re not a Christian band. I try to write through a lens rather than on top of a soapbox.”

After nearly being suspended from his Christian high school for playing at a local club that featured a themed room called Hell, Hull home­schooled himself for his senior year and focused on his band. He cycled through almost 15 members before enlisting drummer Jeremiah Edmond, who’d engineered records for Big Boi and Bubba Sparxxx, and two friends, bassist Jonathan Cor­ ley and keyboardist Chris Freeman, for their self­released 2006 debut, I’m

Like a Virgin Losing a Child. The album filtered Hull’s musings on faith, doubt, and Woody Allen movies through a precise racket reminiscent of Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie; it garnered them another guitar player, Robert McDowell, and a record deal.

For their new album, Mean Everything to Nothing (Favorite Gentlemen/ Canvasback), Hull demoed 70 “slow, ominous” songs, then scrapped them all. “We were just like, ‘Fuck it!’” he says, laughing. “We wanted it to be heavy like Pinkerton or In Utero.” While stomping riffs and wagging rhythms dominate,

there are still quiet moments, includ­ ing “I Can Feel a Hot One,” Hull’s surre­ alistic vision of his wife dying in a car wreck (“The Lord showed me dreams of my daughter / She was crying inside your stomach”). He maintains Mean Everything is “less spiritual” than their debut, but makes no apologies for the occasional ecclesiastical reference.

“It’s just like anything that’s been in your life,” he says. “If I grew up on a farm, I’d be writing about chickens.”

BY DAVID PEISNER

PHOTO BY ANDREAS LASZLO KONRATH

sTyling By EricA BlumEnTHAl

46 mAy 2009 / WATcH vidEO: sPin.cOm/mAnc-OrcH

On FrEEm An: Bur BErry PrOrsum c ArdigAn, Bur BErry.c Om; WEsc j EAns, WEsc.c Om. On Hull: BArking irOns T-sHir T, BArkingirOns.cOm. On mcdO WEll: c Ock Pi T c ArdigAn, c OckPi TusA.cOm. On Edm Ond: BArking irOns sHir T; lEvi’s j EAns, lEvi.cOm. On cOrl Ey: BArking irOns s Hir T.