The sophomore album is an ominous phrase that causes even the most self-assured of musicians to break out into a sweat. Perhaps an artist’s breakout album had only been a success because it simply was exactly what its audience wanted to hear at the right time. Maybe had considered this to be the case for front man Andrew McMahon when Jack’s Mannequin’s pop Beach Boys-influenced Everything in Transit, released in 2006, was such a success. The CD proved to be a coming-of-age story, and a single person cannot write too many of those. For Andrew McMahon, however, good writing material was not hard to find.
On the same day that Jack Mannequin’s breakout album was released, McMahon was in the hospital, receiving a bone marrow transplant in hopes of treating his diagnosis of Acute Lymphacytic Leukemia. Two years later, while happily in remission, the haunting tale of McMahon’s journey in The Glass Passenger is apparent through the upbeat chords resonating in synergy with his at times paradoxically troubling lyrics. “Beat my body like a rag doll/You stuck the needles in my hip/Said ‘we’re not gonna lie/Son you just might die/Get you on that morphine trip’” McMahon sings in Caves. McMahon’s recollection of a troubling relationship in American Love and fears of career failure in Crashing reveal how the wide range of content featured will appeal to a broader audience.
The rough, power-chords featured in Bloodshot, a lament to the struggles of returning soldiers, reveal the darker side of this album, both in sound and in content, as opposed to the lighter, more pop-influenced appeal of the former Everything in Transit. However, there are the upbeat songs, like The Resolution and Spinning, which remind Jack’s Mannequin fans of the sound that they are so familiar to, “I’m alive/And I don’t need a witness to know that I survived/I’m not looking for forgiveness/I just need light/I need light in the dark as I search for the resolution,” McMahon sings as the first words the listener hears when the album begins.
The Resolution, the first song on the album, has a fighter attitude that gives it the potential to be an appealing anthem for an energetic and unapologetic youth. Considering there is an anticipated music video for The Resolution in the making, the band’s choice of the video director-Stephenie Meyer, author of the popular Twilight series-may also be appealing to a younger audience.
The most astonishing contribution to the album in the three-piece, seven minute song Caves, with an almost eerie piano melody as it graduates in a harder rock sound. This album has incorporated a more “rock” sound, with the piano melodies driven into guitar riffs, and a darker sound in general. “And out here, I watch the Sun circle, the Earth, Marrows collide and we burn, In God’s glory praise,The spirit calls out from the caves. The walls fell, and there I lay, saved. And what if we buried forever/Like the past never happened/And time did not exist for us at all/I think that we’d still be traveling together/Through all kinds of weather/Everything’s a piece of everyone” McMahon declares, finishing the album with those heavy words. In a recent blog post, McMahon said, “The truth is, this record came with so many possible direction, and…it has taken quite some time to find the voice and the words that would artfully portray this particular moment in my life.” This album takes philosophical view of self-discovery and self-acceptance, to the point where any pop/rock music fan can relate to one man’s journey on the road of survival.
By Negin Mashaiee, Echo opnions editor
