Monday, May 16, 2011

The 11 Best Songs By Manchester Orchestra


This should have come out last week if not for Blogger's two-day hiatus.

Took a long road trip this weekend.  Started to grade music on a new scale.  The road trip scale.

I was surprised by how many of my favorite albums are not the most enjoyable to listen to while I'm driving a car.  Actually, I found myself skipping rapidly through them to get the songs I wanted to hear while avoiding the songs that were quickly putting me to sleep.  And this isn't a knock at mellow albums, I still found the melodic pace of the xx and Bon Iver to be quite entertaining.  The Cure's Wish was outstanding.  But while listening to a lot of my favorite albums, I found very little about them that I actually liked.  I struggled through DM's Some Great Reward, DCFC's Narrow Stairs, and The Killers Hot Fuss.  Oddly, I made it through Brandon Flowers solo album without skipping once.

Maybe some albums are just made with a different pace in mind.  Or maybe my frame of mind was in a different place.  Machester Orchestra's new album kept pace with me on my two-day fourteen hour trip...so they must be doing something right.

Here are the 11 Best Songs By Manchester Orchestra:

1.  Wolves at Night (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
2.  Shake It Out (Mean Everything To Nothing)
3.  In My Teeth (Mean Everything To Nothing)
4.  Alice and Interiors (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
5.  The Only One (Mean Everything To Nothing)
6.  Where Have You Been? (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
7.  Everything To Nothing (Mean Everything To Nothing)
8.  Anne Louise (Fourteen Years of Excellence)
9.  This Neighborhood Is Bleeding (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
10.  Sleeper 1972 (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
11.  I Was A Lid (Let My Pride Be What's Left Behind)

Buy Manchester Orchestra's new album, Simple Math, now!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not a bad list but I think it's missing some essentials. My top 11 would probably be:

1. Where Have You Been?
2. I Can Feel a Hot One
3. Colly Strings
4. Shake It Out
5. I've Got Friends
6. I Can Barely Breathe
7. The Procession
8. Wolves at Night
9. Alice and Interiors
10. I Was a Lid
11. Pride

By the way, the new album is superb.

Anonymous said...

My take on I'm Like a Virgin and Mean Everything to Nothing

1. I Can Barely Breathe
2. Where Have You Been?
3. Shake It Out
4. Colly Strings
5. Wolves at Night
6. The Neighborhood Is Bleeding
7. I've Got Friends
8. Alice and Interiors
9. I Can Feel a Hot One
10. My Friend Marcus

Mean Everything to Nothings is a brilliantly structured album, but I don't feel like there are many standout tracks. I feel that it's probably the better of the two albums overall, though, even though that's not reflected in my top 10.

Unknown said...

It will always change for me . I love Andy Hull including Bad Books and RAGC. But going on only Manchester songs.
1. I can feel your pain.
2. Anne Louise
3. Girl with Broken wings.
4. Play it again Sam.
5. Where Have You Been.
6. Mean Everything to nothing.
7. Shake it out.
8. I can feel a hot one.
9. It's okay with me.
10. Jimmy he whispers.
11.Do you really like being alone. But all of then are amazing.

Unknown said...

Where's simple math?! It's a definite top 4.