(continued)
These new songs, which would become I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child, were powerful, compact rockers that battered away at one structure before taking an abrupt turn into the next. The effect is akin to getting lost on purpose: Just as the layout makes sense – even familiar – it’s the unexpected detours that maintain the thrill.
Though Manchester Orchestra’s new songs were decidedly not going to comprise a concept album per se, Hull still found that his lyrical voice was best spoken through characters rather than personal experience. “I think that a lot of the time music should be like movies,” says Hull. “Whether or not the songs are from characters’ perspective they’re still characters in my brain. So they’re different parts of my personality saying whatever it is that that person’s feeling. When you’re in a band when your seventeen there’s a big difference between nineteen and twenty. We’ve always taken our band very seriously but we didn’t know what to take seriously. These songs are a whole lot more ‘This is what our band sounds like and this is what we wanna write.’”
After months of writing, rehearsing and touring on their new material the band decided that the next album should reflect the same energy as their creative process. When the band entered the recording studio with producer Dan Hannon in the summer of 2006, they played everything live – passionately bashing their songs out together in the same room. Manchester Orchestra’s full-length debut, I Am Like A Virgin Losing A Child, was born. Along the way they found a new comrade in studio intern Robert McDowell who would later become a full-fledged member of the band.
As with any great story I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child benefits from a strong introduction – and “Wolves At Night” fits the bill. From it’s onslaught of radio squelch and tense strumming, “Wolves” explodes into a dense expanse of guitars and funeral organ before bringing itself taut for Hull’s introductory vocal: “I could have sworn that I saw you knee bent on the bedside / Arms stretched like a kite that time will eventually grow.” As the song’s hooks collide into one another we are given a glimpse of the themes that I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child will explore: Confrontations with the supernatural, the validity of our eyes, and protagonists desperately attempting to untie a variety of spiritual knots. Says Hull:
“The concept of the record is sort of my loss… My realization that I don’t have control over anything. And that’s a good thing. They’re all personal songs in that every song is about me. In all of the loss there’s still this hope I’m trying to convey.
“When I was writing concept records before, I think I was trying to write for other people to learn a lesson thinking I had something to preach or prove… ‘You guys don’t understand how much I have a great grasp of the world at seventeen,’” he explains with a laugh. “But I think [these songs] are about me and how I really don’t understand anything and I’m trying to battle demons in my life and things that I’m trying to grasp. There is definitely a spiritual – kind of religious – element to it”