Interview: Manchester Orchestra

Manchester Orchestra are currently out on their biggest headlining tour to date, in support of their third studio album, Simple Math. The 10-track effort dropped back in May via Favorite Gentleman/Columbia Records. The Atlanta group's US run (Pac Sun Tour) hits Montclair's Wellmont Theatre this coming Sunday, November 13th. White Denim and The Deer Hunter will also be there as support. Tickets are on sale now (buy).

We here at NJU were lucky enough to jump on the phone with MO and find out what goes into preparing for a bigger headlining trek, who they would like to collaborate with most and what they will be up to in 2012. Check out the interview, stream "Virgin" and view the video for their latest record's title track, below. 

 Manchester Orchestra - Virgin

Now that you're headlining bigger shows, what type of extra preparations go into making a decent sized tour happen? 

Not really much. We kind of just do what we've always done. It's nice to be able to play for longer and try and set up a good show for people. Once we find a good setlist, that's actually our biggest worry for a tour like this...

How do you rotate the setlist?

We just kind of start off with one song and move from there. It's very dumb how we do it [laughs]. We find a good setlist and we'll be like "ok, that's pretty good", then we'll change something along the way. It depends on what type of tour we're doing. Whether we want to do a punch in the face at the beginning of the set or we if we want to come in more acoustic and build it up.

You guys haven't had a ton of mass media attention, aside from just touring, what would you contribute your success too? 

I think that's it really. I think word of mouth has been really kind to us and the fact that we've been able to continually come back to these markets and play for the kids that like us and tell their friends about us, I really think that's it. We've never really had a massive hit single, "I've Got Friends" was nice, but it wasn't like, you know, "Hey Ya!" by OutKast. I think it's really people talking about our band.

You guys have accomplished a lot over the past few years, any particular goals you'd still like to reach as a band?

Honestly, we pretty much achieved all the goals we wanted to reach when we were like 15, 16. I think it would be nice to tour more in Europe, see more of that part of the world. We're just kind of enjoying where we are right now.

What are some dream collaborations? Realistic or unrealistic.

I think all of us collectively would like to work with Kanye West, because he's amazing and that's pretty much all there is to that. If Bon Iver wants to do something I'd definitely do it with him. That'd be nice. I don't know, Neil Young would be a dream collaboration.

After you're done touring on Simple Math, do you guys see yourselves jumping into LP #4 or taking some time off, releasing an EP or maybe doing side projects?

Yeah, I think we're going to do a mixture of hanging out and working on side projects next year. We've kind of been going hard for four years now and we kind of want to take a little bit of a breather and figure out what the next chapter is from there. So I think we're going to take some time off and enjoy being home.

When you eventually record the next full length do you see yourselves approaching it similarly to the way you approached Simple Math, or are there things you would like to do differently?

I really enjoyed the recording of Simple Math. I doubt we'll be going to as big of a studio as Blackbird in Nashville this time. I think were going to try and do it more relaxed the next time. I think the way our recording processes have been going were super stressed to doing everything live to Simple Math, where we did it more piece by piece. Now we'd like to do it in our own studio, so I think that's the only thing we'd change.

Anymore music videos in the works for tracks off Simple Math?

No, we got nothing in the works as far as that goes. Probably put out some more podcasts, but that's about it. Simple Math kind of did exactly what we wanted it too, so we're not sure if we want to put out another single or anything.