As they play “fabled spot” 2000trees for the very first time, Manchester Orchestra feel like the perfect band for the occasion. Dive in with our DORK x 2000TREES festival guide cover feature.
Words: Alexander Bradley.
Photos: Shervin Lainez.
Find yourself a band that can do both. Last October, Manchester Orchestra played three nights at Union Chapel in London with a series of stark, hauntingly beautiful renditions of their songs. Less than a year later and they’ll return to these shores with a full band showing as they make their 2000trees debut. Whether in the startling quiet of a magnificent church or on a Main Stage in the middle of the Cotswolds, Manchester Orchestra have the power to devastate wherever they are.
Their Trees induction has been a long time coming, and Andy Hull is the first to admit it’s long overdue for them. “It’s kind of like a fabled spot,” he smiles through his beard as we begin with the basics of what he knows of the festival.
“The last several years I’ve been hearing more and more about it. I guess I’d heard of it originally from our friends in Frightened Rabbit playing back in the day, and then we’d heard stuff from our friends in the Biffy camp who’s playing this year with Empire State Bastard.
“We were just with them last week in Atlanta, on their tour with Sleep Token, and they were talking about how magical it is to do.”
According to Andy, Simon Neil described the festival as one of those places where “You just walk around and go, ‘Oh, these are our people’,” and that has only increased the excitement in MO camp for finally stepping out at Upcote Farm. “We’re now proper stoked for it.”
So what’s the plan for when they get to Trees this July, then? “I like to walk around to catch the vibe,” he admits. Well, as anyone who has been to 2000trees before will attest, wandering around is likely to lead to the forest and the spectacular Forest Stage, a setting in which there are very few more captivating settings to enjoy live music. “I think I saw The Xcerts… did they play that stage one year? Yeah, I think I saw a video of that,” he adds excitedly while building a clearer picture of what their trip is going to look like.
Beyond the vibe-catching, he hopes to see Empire State Bastard, and he reckons The Gaslight Anthem are gonna be awesome too. The rest of the plan is to find bands that he hasn’t seen before.
And as for their set, which is the main support to The Gaslight Anthem’s headline performance on the Thursday night? “I feel like we’ve just gotta like whip everybody’s ass you know? In like the softest… hardest… the best way we can! We’re definitely going to go out there swinging,” he assures.
“We love our audience and wish we could make it over to the UK more often. Our path to – I don’t know if you’d call it ‘popularity’, but the following that we’ve had there has been such a unique and organic thing that’s never really been pushed by any mainstream media. So it’s pretty cool to just have this. And it feels like that’s what this festival is all about, too. It would be shitty if we went out there and tried some avant-garde noise set. We’re gonna put on a great show.”
It promises to be a show unrecognisable from their stripped-down church sets of last year. Being able to play both is an opportunity Manchester Orchestra have earned by putting the time in and climbing the ladder. “We’ve played the Barfly ten times. We’ve done every venue you can think of. Opening up arenas with Kings of Leon,” Andy reels off as he talks about how they have been afforded the chance to play these amazing shows now. And it’s not just in the UK either, but back home in the US, they’ve played both Red Rocks while on their co-headline tour with Jimmy Eat World and a tiny DIY venue for a run-through of ‘COPE’ in the last year, too.
“We truly feel like there are no rules right now”
Andy Hull
“The church thing, it felt like it was a really cool time to be able to take a step back. It was risky. We didn’t really know exactly how the crowd [would react]. We hadn’t gone over and done something like proper acoustic solo sets before, but it was pretty mind-blowing; an incredibly powerful couple of days,” he reflects.
As if to really push their limits, they recorded the Union Chapel shows, which will most likely be released in the new year. Reminiscing on that run of shows, he recalls: “The first night was still a bit in the jetlag, like sort of surreal, David Lynch-ian weird. Oh my God, it was so deeply quiet,” he says getting progressively more perplexed as the memories come flooding back. “I couldn’t make anyone laugh. It was an amazing experience, but oh man!
“And then, by night two, we got our footing. They were all really, really special and different from each other, which was cool. You learn as you’re going on, and we hit this sweet spot on night two where it felt like it was new, and we were doing it well.”
While they eventually found their groove, it turned out to be a much more challenging experience than the full band shows he has become accustomed to. “It’s such a tightrope. Any slight fuckup is amplified, and so it’s like the next kind of level of intensity you lock into, which I really love, but it is like it’s strangely more mentally exhausting than a rock show,” he concedes.
From the pews at Union Chapel to the swathes of bodies in a field just outside of Cheltenham, they’re still fundamentally the same Manchester Orchestra: the one that can break bones as they rip into ‘Shake It Out’ or shatter your soul with the quiet brilliance of ‘The Silence’ will still be at play regardless of the stage they are on.
“It’s a different energy. It’s like a different type of magic that goes on. You’re still communicating with this cool, raw nerve, but the dynamics become far more ranging in highs and lows. When we’re playing a festival set where it’s more mainstream, we’re probably just going to be punching the whole time.
“It does feel like with this kind of set, you have the freedom to play some slower stuff too,” he reasons while considering that the 2000trees billing of like-minded bands will allow them some quieter moments too.
With the shows Manchester Orchestra are playing, the music they’ve been making and the projects they’re working on, their Trees set will be another crowning moment in what feels like the best days of this band. But the present is a funny place for the band right now. With the 10-year anniversary of ‘COPE’ being celebrated more with an anniversary US Tour later in the year, the band are doing a lot looking back at their most controversial work.
Andy describes their anthology as “unintentional chapters in the book”, and with ‘COPE’ it is the chapter in which he has the most pride in the band for following their vision. Back in 2013, they were without a label deal, completely independent, and they set out to propel themselves forward under their own steam. “That was always in our DNA, but that’s a harder decision to make when you’re getting into your mid-late 20s than it is mid-late teens,” he considers.
“We doubled down, and it was a divisive record, and it ended up succeeding. It brought people into our band, and it made some mad, but that’s okay. It was such an important album for us to commit to because it then allowed us to kind of change the mindset of how we want to create stuff going forward, which is basically following that thing to the fullest you can. You keep developing tools as you keep trying to learn and grow and realise there’s no real ceiling to art and to albums and to accessing these heavy, helpful, therapeutic groups of work.”
It was an aggressive and violent album, but now, in context, sitting perfectly centred in the middle of the timeline of their work, it is one that informed all that followed afterwards. It’s much easier to reconcile the left turn taken on ‘COPE’ with the knowledge of what followed after, but, at the time, they were scared.
“It was terrifying at the time to be like, we’re going to take this turn and hope that our fan base can understand this isn’t us saying this is our identity is forever. We’re saying if you can catch the clues here, get on the wave, and you can have fun for this album cycle and enjoy this band in this way,” he adds.
“Sometimes you’ve got to punch people in the mouth, and sometimes you’ve got to give them a hug, and we can do all those things”
Andy Hull
The legacy of ‘COPE’ is promised to continue in what comes next from Manchester Orchestra, too. Andy is not the sort of person who tends to look back very often, nor does he particularly enjoy accepting the accolades of the present. Andy Hull is very much focused on what comes next. While their next album is in its infancy, the singer seems certain the fingerprints of ‘COPE’ are likely to have a different impact on their sound this time around.
“We’ve had this restraint and followed this certain path the last several years; it allows this real excitement, too. We truly feel like there are no rules right now, and that’s a really exciting thing as we’ve been writing and creating stuff. I don’t feel like we’ve got to go make another ‘COPE’ record. Don’t feel like we have to make a ‘Black Mile’ record. We’re just gonna go make the best Manchester record that’s been made. That’s the goal,” he teases.
While the triptych of albums that started with ‘A Black Mile To The Surface’ redefined Manchester Orchestra stylistically, the groundwork was laid with ‘COPE’ as they realised their commitment to sonically exploring their ideas further than ever before. As a band, as a solid four-piece, the cast of Manchester Orchestra was fully moulded and had set a stable foundation on which they could build. And, just like the church shows, it took time to find the groove. So when it comes to making new music, it’s less about the sound, the hook, the distortion people; it’s about how it feels and the impact of what they make. “Sometimes you’ve got to punch people in the mouth, and sometimes you’ve got to give them a hug, and we can do all those things,” Andy explains. “We just figure out the smartest, most effective way to serve the song.”
“We’re just weird,” he continues. “We take a long time and try everything out, but we really, really enjoy it. I think that’s probably been a huge change in the last ten years as well. We hold this insane amount of pressure on our shoulders, so we also really try to remind each other to enjoy the process.”
So when it comes to 2000trees, Manchester Orchestra will be in a moment that is straddling the past while looking also to the future and trying to enjoy the process. Within the present, in the picturesque, hopefully dry, fields of the festival, will be a band right at the top of their game. They promise to show their best as the pendulum swings from those delicate moments to those flashes of might as they once again show that they are a band that can do both. But really, there is more nuance at play here, and a Trees performance that spans nearly 20 years of their career will show there are many sides as well as limitless possibilities for Manchester Orchestra. They can do both, but as they look ahead to what comes next, it feels limiting to frame them as jostling between only two extremes. Manchester Orchestra can do it all. ■
Manchester Orchestra play 2000trees on 11th – 13th July 2024. Get tickets and find out more at 2000trees.co.uk now. Follow Dork’s Dot To Dot Festival Guide Spotify playlist here.
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