[rating=6.00]
Cope, the fourth full-length album by Manchester Orchestra, finds the Atlanta rockers at their loudest and most bombastic. From start to finish, the collection is wall to wall guitar crunch and dropped-D power chords. It abandons the experimentation of 2011’s Simple Math, opting for straightforward arena rock while eschewing the nuance that made the band’s earlier work so special.
In some ways, Cope is a step backward for the band. Gone are the intricate melodies of their early songs, as are the artistic use of quiet moments and empty space. Instead, Cope is 38 minutes of unrelenting power — murky distortion, loud crashing guitars, and frontman Andy Hull’s signature emotional howl. The album-opening “Top Notch” sets the tone, both with its deep growling guitar riffs and with its formulaic approach. Like the ten songs that follow it, “Top Notch” settles into a pattern: loud choruses swathed in a thick layer of distortion, quiet verses with palm-muted guitars, and riffs that are massive but not particularly distinctive.
It’s not that Hull and company forgot how to write introspective melodies. Poetic tracks that evoked the minimalism of 2006’s Like a Virgin Losing a Child were left on the cutting room floor as the band made the decision to record an album that is unwaveringly heavy. That decision to play loud from start to finish yields a glaring lack of variety, with songs at times blending together in an indistinguishable sludge of feedback, but it also gives the collection a heft not often found in the indie rock scene. If Simple Math was Manchester Orchestra’s arthouse picture, then Cope is their bloated blockbuster action flick, meant to be cranked up while working up a sweat at the gym.
The album’s sonic monotony shouldn’t obscure Hull’s emotive lyrics, though. Familiar themes of loss, struggles of faith and coping with difficult times are found amid the six-string crunch. “There is a name for men like you inside the dark/ and I know your faults/ I know the way you write them off,” Hull sings on “Girl Harbor.” The album-closing title track, easily the heaviest and catchiest song in the mix, finds Hull lamenting the unhealthy coping mechanisms that are used to get through dark times. “And I hope if there is one thing I let go it is the way that we cope,” he sings. The album then ends appropriately, after a few triumphant shouts of “I know,” with Manchester Orchestra disappearing amid a trail of fading feedback.
