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Band Grows Along With Its Audience

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By CURTIS ROSS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 24, 2008

For Atlanta indie-rock group Manchester Orchestra, 2007 went a little something like this:

"We played our first show of 2007 in Columbia, S.C., to 25 people. We played our last show at Wembley Arena in London with Kings of Leon to a few thousand people," says drummer Jeremiah Edmond. "The difference between those two shows how far we'd come."

It wasn't quite an overnight success. The band had landed slots at South by Southwest and Lollapalooza in 2006, the year it released its full-length debut, "I'm Like a Virgin Losing a Child," on its own Favorite Gentleman label.

But that year of buzz-building came to fruition in 2007. "I'm Like a Virgin" was re-released on the Sony-distributed Canvasback label, while the band's live reputation was spread opening shows for bands such as Brand New.

"It's been a long, gradual build," Edmond says.

"Long" is a relative term, especially for a band where the average age is around 20. But the growth began before most of them had picked up their high school diplomas.

Singer-guitarist and chief songwriter Andy Hull, in fact, was home-schooled for his senior year in order to devote more time to his music.

Hull enlisted Edmond and bassist Jonathan Corley to record the Manchester Orchestra's first release, the 2005 EP "You Brainstorm, I Brainstorm, But Brilliance Needs a Good Editor."

Keyboardist Chris Freeman joined after the EP was recorded, and guitarist Robert McDowell made Manchester Orchestra a quintet around the time "Virgin" was recorded.

All hail from the Atlanta suburbs and grew up with "pretty religious backgrounds," Edmond says.

"We all have the basic foundations of belief that we share," Edmond says. "But we never set out to make our music or lyrics about that.

"But art imitates life and your music takes on aspects of whatever's going on in your life," Edmond says. "The spiritual element and religious aspects, the searching questions seeped into the songs.

"I didn't realize it until after the record was done," Edmond says. "I guess that's what was going on with us."

The album's concept and title come from Hull's "realization that I don't have control over anything. And that's a good thing," he says on the band's Web site.

"I really don't understand anything and I'm trying to battle demons in my life and things that I'm trying to grasp," Hull says of the "Virgin" songs. "There is definitely a spiritual - kind of religious - element to it."

Besides the spiritual background, the band members share many musical influences such as Wilco, Pedro the Lion, Bob Dylan, My Morning Jacket and Death Cab for Cutie, Edmond says.

The band splits along some musical lines, though.

"Robert and I went through our hardcore and metal phase in high school," Edmond says. "When we end up driving late at night, we put on old Zao to keep us pumped up. The rest of them just have to deal."

ON TOUR

Manchester Orchestra

WITH: John Ralston and All Get Out

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: The Orpheum, 1902 Avenida Republica de Cuba (14th Street), Tampa; (813) 248-9500

COST: $8 advance, $10 at the door

Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com.

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