Manchester Orchestra BLACK MILE TO (2 LP)

Georgia's Manchester Orchestra deliver one of their most balanced and mature efforts with their fifth full-length album, 2017's measured A Black Mile to the Surface. Technically, the album is a follow-up to the group's 2014 return to electric guitar-based hardcore, Cope, and companion piece Hope, which featured acoustic reworkings of songs from Cope. That said, A Black Mile to the Surface also follows on the heels of lead singer Andy Hull and keyboardist Robert McDowell's much lauded and experimental soundtrack to the 2016 dark comedy-drama Swiss Army Man. That album found them crafting entirely vocal-based arrangements that evoked both the layered harmonies of the Beach Boys and the minimalist classical compositions of Steve Reich. Rather than separate any of these disparate sounds this time out, on A Black Mile to the Surface they offer a modicum of all three, shifting from intensely played, post-hardcore-influenced rock to ruminative acoustic balladry and layered soundscapes, often