Manchester Orchestra’s sixth album showcases the strength and boundary-pushing invention of Manchester Orchestra’s consistently impressive catalogue. The album is a testament to the kinship of the band’s songwriting duo, Andy Hull and Robert McDowell; a bond that enabled them to take a deeply personal experience and turn it into limitless, compassionate, communal, revelatory art.
With Masks, the band (Hull, McDowell, drummer Tim Very, and bassist Andy Prince) pushed themselves to break beyond the scope and limits of every previous album, and focused on creating a tightly-woven, cinematic record intended to be an immersive experience, listened to in sequence and in a single sitting, with the songs working together to tell a bold, long-form narrative. Co-produced by Hull, McDowell, Catherine Marks—with whom they collaborated on 2017’s instant-classic A Black Mile To The Surface (featuring the band’s first #1 AAA and Top 15 Alternative radio hit “The Gold”)—and artist / producer Ethan Gruska (Phoebe Bridgers, Fiona Apple), the four-headed production monster proved to be a synergetic and organically invigorating combination. The result is their most powerful and sonically impressive release of their career: an album as epic and ripping sonically as it is conceptually heady, which unfurls into an ever-expanding and lush world of instrumentation.