365 project: "what if it was true, that everything we thought was right was wrong"

111.

artist:Manchester orchestra
album:simple math

the release of this album sort of snuck up on me. i mean, i "like" Manchester orchestra on facebook, so I've seen all of the updates about solving math equations to stream new tracks and things like that, but i honestly didn't pay much attention after hearing the first week's song, the title track of the new album, "simple math". 
i didn't not like it or anything like that, i just didn't find myself drawn in enough to continue checking in every week. i figured id just wait til i could get my hands on the album and go from there.

i like the album. i don't love it, but i like it. I've listened through about three or four times now, though none of them straight through, and i cant even figure out if i have any clear favorites. there are parts of songs that I'm in love with, and that id marry if it were legal (not to mention feasible) to be wed to a part of a song, but then there are other parts that i just don't hear because they sound like everything else that i put in my ears these days.

there are a few times during the course of the album where the actual music makes me stop breathing because of how beautiful it is. i posted on facebook last night that the strings on a few of the songs on this album make me want to fall in love. its so bizarre for some notes or a melody to have that kind of effect on someone...makes that same piece of their heart jump that does when falling in love.

 i need to spend more time with this album to make a full assessment of it, but i think i like it enough to keep in in the starting rotation. I'm sitting here reading the lyrics along while the song "simple math" is playing and it just kind of clicked for me whats going on in the song, and its so sad and so vulnerable.

"I'm lost and hardly noticed, slight goodbye
I want to rip your lips off in my mouth
And even in my greatest moment doubt
The line between deceit and right now

Simple math
It's how our bodies even got here
Sinful math
The ebb and flow to multiply"
those last two lines made me gasp. the song seems to be about infidelity, and those lines are written so perfectly to describe what is going on.

here's the song, since this seems to be what i do now. the video for this one is pretty superb:

I'm falling asleep at my desk. i need to go to bed. i either need to start doing speed or invent a way to add more hours to every day.

365 project "i've got friends in all the right places, i know what they want, and i know they dont want me to stay"

101.

artist:manchester orchestra
album:mean everything to nothing

it took me a really long time to pick up this album after it was released. i wasn't the hugest fan in the world of the first album, and i was told that this one wasn't that great, so i shied away from it. then one night i was in the mall and had a gift certificate, and this was the only record in the collection at hot topic that i had any sort of interest in at all, and it was on sale, and it came with the CD, so i figured since it wasn't my money, it didn't matter, and i picked it up.

i came home and put it away in the crate and then just kind of forgot about it for a while. one day i was cleaning my room and decided i might as well put it on the turntable and give it a spin, since i owned it and all. i was pleasantly surprised with the sounds coming from my speakers, and decided that i definitely liked this album, which was more than i could say for the first one.

i have seen manchester orchestra in concert a hundred million times. I'm exaggerating, obviously, but the number is quite high. i started listening to them because i saw them with Brand New and i went through a long phase of "if Jesse Lacey likes it, it must be good, even if it sucks ass." i, thankfully, have grown out of this phase. they toured with Brand New a lot. they also toured with Kevin Devine a lot. sometimes all of them would tour together. these were generally "cant miss" shows for me, even if i was only pretending to like ManO. this album changed that for me, though, the pretending i mean, and i actually wanted to see this band.

they played opening night of bonnaroo last summer. i was in a rush to get over to see them, and by the time we got in, we were only able to see the last few songs. i was disappointed because it had finally come to a point where i was excited to see them for realsies and i missed out because of all sorts of things that i had no control over. this was the first time that i actively wanted to see them, and not because they were opening for someone else, and i missed most of the set.

i still spin this disk a great deal. lyrically it far surpasses I'm like a virgin losing a child, and musically i feel like i can get behind it, although its not that different from the first album. its so weird to feel so polar opposite towards these two albums.