The Hi-Fi Melbourne

Presented by Chugg Entertainment, XIII Touring, Triple J

+ guests

Mean Everything To Nothing , the second album from Atlanta's Manchester Orchestra, is everything you want a rock record to be: raw, urgent, emotional, and 100 percent authentic.

Inspired by the pounding, primal assault of Weezer's Pinkerton , Nirvana's In Utero , and Foo Fighters' The Colour and the Shape , this young band has created its own version of what a classic rock album should sound like, complete with fiercely beautiful melodies, shifting guitar and keyboard textures, loud/soft dynamics, and an urgency in each band member's performance, especially Hull's cathartic vocals.

The drama is magnified by the fact that the album's first six songs bleed into one another without stopping. The blistering opener "The Only One" immediately gives way to the propulsive "Shake It Out" and the torrential first single "I've Got Friends," followed by the anguished "Pride" and the menacing "In My Teeth," before slowing down on the darkly funny "100 Dollars." Then the album pauses and down-shifts into less relentless yet equally gripping territory on songs from "I Can Feel A Hot One" (which was featured on Gossip Girl last September), to the ruminative closer "The River."

Indeed the band's chemistry is palpable on Mean Everything To Nothing , perhaps because, after more than a year of touring with such artists as Kings of Leon, Brand New, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Say Anything, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, as well as performing their own headlining shows, Manchester Orchestra has become a powerful and well-oiled machine. "The touring made us so incredibly tight on all levels," Hull says, "so there was no pride involved if someone said, 'No that doesn't work, don't do that.' No one got their feelings hurt because we were all dedicated to the same thing -- making the best record we could."

The band were supported in the process by their producers, studio vet Joe Chiccarelli (The Shins, My Morning Jacket, The Raconteurs) in conjunction with longtime friend and producer Dan Hannon and the band. "Joe is the absolute tone master," Hull says. "The sounds he gets are so good. We wrote these songs so quickly and he was great in helping us do surgery to make them better. When Dan came in, it was like fresh blood pumping through the project. He'd move five knobs and click a few things and it was like, 'Oh shit, that's great.' The whole thing was a great collaboration."