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.