Live Review: Manchester Orchestra - Union Chapel, London 02/10/2023
Sometimes, if you’re very, very lucky, the heavens collide to form something akin to perfection — those rare times where the bands and the venue all align in tranquil harmony to create one incredible, transcendent night. At ‘An Evening with Manchester Orchestra’, occurring three nights in a row at Islington’s idyllic and reverent Union Chapel, fans were lucky enough to experience three.
With people travelling from all over the country and beyond, waiting in the wind and the rain since the early afternoon, and the queue stretching past the venue, down the steps, and on towards the road, it’s safe to say that the anticipation for Manchester Orchestra’s second sold out show at Union Chapel was pretty damn heightened. But, from the first step inside the breathtaking venue, the stain glass windows refracting a dazzling array of colours — sky blue one second, blood red the next — and the host of concentric pews, waiting to bear witness to even part of the adored yet still heinously underrated band, it was pretty easy to tell why. Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, Manchester Orchestra are ordinarily a four piece — but for these intimate and, pun intended, heavenly shows, only the duo of Andy Hull and Robert McDowell travelled over, all to grace these tiny isles with their acoustic goodness. Acoustic shows are known to be special anyway, seeing songs stripped back and laid bare, but adding in a genuine church? What could be better!
First, though, came the support… and what a support. SkyeChristy, two sisters from the States but ultimately hailing from the UK — we’ll be taking credit for them, thank you very much — were, in short, phenomenal.
Saying that, though, it was at first bizarre experiencing the disconnect between sight and sound as Sophie and Georgia took to the beautifully framed stage. Two tiny figures, backlit by the glare of spotlights shining from on high, it would be dangerously easy to dismiss them as something quaint — nice, but perhaps forgettable — but then you’re exposed to their phenomenal, soul stirring vocals, and you’re mesmerised. The husky breathlessness of Georgia’s sultry vocals was perfectly tempered by her sister’s lighter (yet equally talented!) touch, her gentle voice harmonising perfectly while her deft fingers, plucking decisively as they rolled across the guitar, gave shape to their melodies. And yet, delicacy aside, there was a palpable edge to the songs; despite the slight Siren sway, pulling you in, the tracks bristled with emotion, pain, and the promise of something more. Tracks like ‘I’m Not Like Alice’, the song that sent them viral on TikTok; ‘Evergreen’, about realising you’re not a kid anymore; the emotional ‘Sending Light (For Lucas)’, written as a tribute to a friend who had passed away, and a cover of Cameo’s ‘Word Up’ — a song you know, even if you don’t know it — served to give one hell of a showing that easily won over the crowd; typically reserved English applause, even more subdued given the holy, reverent venue, still managed to persist long after the two’s final song had faded away and the duo had run the gauntlet of emotions — surprised, abashed, and, finally, accepting of the praise.
A half an hour performance that already blew some gigs out of the water, and the night was barely getting started.
Half an hour later — exactly half an hour; a band taking to the stage just as the clock strikes their start time is so rare as to already be weirdly special — the crowd still somewhere between raving about the support and babbling anxiously for the main event, the church was thrown into darkness. Everyone hushed, almost hauntingly, as the two men emerged from behind the curtain and took to the stage, gently breaking into ‘I Know How To Speak’, the B-side to 2017’s A Black Mile To The Surface. With the duo backlit by a whole host of light rigs, framed by the beautiful imagery of the altar itself, you could already tell you were in for one hell of a night. And, as Andy’s vocals pervaded the pin drop silence of the church, reverberating around the room and echoing the ethereal religiousness of the church itself, the guitars of both Andy and Robert laying a subtle line for them to dance across, before breaking straight into a Black Mile celebration of ‘The Grocery’, ‘The Maze’ and ‘The Gold’, the crowd could tell they were in for a heaven of one too.
Mind you, this is all with the crowd being as silent as the Saintly statues dotted around the place, a rarity in and of itself. The first crowd noise only came when the band finally began to take a breath, in the form of a resounding roar after Andy’s strained vocals, captured perfectly between transcendental and despairing, left the venue with no options but to let loose a ragged and raucous cheer.
Not everything was quite so meek, however. A whistle during Simple Math’s ‘Deer’, during the fan-favourite lyrics — ‘Dear everybody that has paid to see my band’ — quickly broke into cheers and jeers, Andy and Rob both cracking a smile, while a story about a drunk heckler some years ago during a rare performance of ‘Girl With Broken Wings’ had the crowd laughing along to the visibly pained Andy’s retelling. Even some song introductions helped break some of the reverie — “I told a story about One Direction last night”, we were told, “but for obvious reasons it won’t be told again… fittingly, this song is called ‘End of the World’”.
‘End Of The World’, more commonly titled ‘I Can Barely Breathe’ from 2006’s I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child, is on record an angsty, pained song, full of warbling instrumentals and strained shouts. Acoustic, though, it’s something else. Haunting doesn’t begin to describe it; add on a tag of fellow album playmate ‘Where Have You Been?’, complete with dazzling cries of ‘God, where have you been?’ ascending all the way up into the steeple, and you have something truly otherworldly. Between Andy’s trembling reimagining and Robert’s understated yet truly remarkable harmonising — not enough to step on the ‘main’ vocals, but just enough to perfectly compliment and elevate them — that song acoustic is something special.
It wasn’t just old stuff, though. It might not be on the ticket, but ‘The Valley of Vision’, the band’s most recent mini-record from earlier this year, was prominently emblazoned on the poster hawked at the merch table, and fans of the heartbreakingly hopeful half-an-hour won’t have been disappointed. Although the full thing might not have gotten an airing, ‘Capital Karma’ and ‘The Way’ in quick succession, along with a haunting rendition of ‘Rear View’, the closing lines fading into nothingness, still felt stupidly special.
As well as a cover of Frightened Rabbit’s ‘My Backwards Walk’ — previously released by the band on a collaborative album celebrating the cult album’s 10th anniversary, released shortly after beloved frontman’s Scott Hutchinson’s devastating disappearance and death in 2018, which felt particularly poignant in the holy setting — it was the final track that truly utilised the venue. ‘Bed Head’, the lead single from A Million Masks Of God, is a beautiful song; from the lyrical composition, with a depth typical of one of Hull’s craftings, to the strangely addictive guitar line, it runs the gamut from unforgettable to just a hell of a lot of fun. But, as Andy’s vocals persisted into the void, and the crowd erupted into rapturous applause, leaping to their feet, it was time for the band — both happy to receive and humbled by their incredible reception — to vacate the venue.
Except, it wasn’t. A few minutes later, there was a surprise encore; and this time, it was a genuinely surprising encore, as much as anything because the night before hadn’t had such a treat! A shame, really, because they missed the typical show closer of ‘The Silence’ stripped down to its powerful, plaintive and vulnerable core.
Even as one of the band’s fabled album closers — to a one, the only fitting word is epic — ‘The Silence’ holds the pride of place as being somehow both monumental and minuscule; explosive, expansive and yet somehow as bare and raw a track as the band have. The verses erupt, the chorus despairingly beautiful… turning it acoustic, then, might make it a little more mournful, perhaps a tiny bit maudlin, but boy does soul-stirring take on a new meaning. And, as the instrumentals faded into nothingness, the absence of Robert’s gently plucked strings almost startling, Andy took this one step further by delivering the incredible outro on his own. Even the microphone took a backseat, the MO maestro relying just on the natural acoustics of the building to carry his tenderly tortured poetry to the thousand strong chorus in front of him.
And then they were finished. A few stunned, silent seconds later, and the church was awash with noise; cheers, claps, and almost fanatical adoration wafting forward, the crowd still at a loss for words at the quasi-religious hour and a half they’d just experienced. It’s just as well that the song had such a climactic end, otherwise they’d likely still be there, trying to appease the ever voracious crowd!
A genuinely spell-binding night, made even better by the fact that the band were recording it for the sake of both a live ‘film’ and a live album, meaning that each and every second, each minute tremble, each visibly strained vein will be able to be experienced anew in the near future. But the true wonder, the magic created in that church, belongs to the few thousand lucky enough to get tickets over the three nights, and that, if that alone, will likely only ever exist in memories. But, for those lucky enough to have them — what stunning memories, eh?
Words by James O’Sullivan
Photo credit: James du Plessis - INSTA / www.jamesduplessis.net
