Credit: Mike Dempsey

Credit: Mike Dempsey

Manchester Orchestra is back. The Atlanta rockers will release A Black Mile to the Surface on July 28 via Loma Vista. It’s the outfit’s first full-length since 2014’s Cope, and a press release says it features production from Catherine Marks (Foals, PJ Harvey, The Killers), John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions In The Sky, Angel Olsen), and the band’s longtime studio partner Dan Hannon.

UPDATE: The band has announced a new tour, and it included a September 6 stop at The Ritz in Ybor City. Ticket prices have not been announced yet, but tickets do go on sale on June 16. Get more information via local.cltampa.com.

A new single — “The Gold” — signals a new direction for the band.

“We’re a band that loves to use heavy, crunchy guitars,” says frontman Andy Hull. “We wondered how we could limit the use of that, so that when the guitars come in they can be creative and impactful. For Swiss Army Man [a Sundance hit the boys worked on] we had to make seventy minutes of music with our hands tied behind our backs. When you’re creating all the sounds you need just from the human voice, it allows you to rethink what is possible, and determine what is really needed. We wanted to make an album in a ‘ non-Manchester’ way if there is such a thing.”

Call your local record store to see if they’ll carry the release. Listen to “The Gold” below.

A Black Mile to the Surface Tracklist:

01. The Maze

02. The Gold

03. The Moth

04. Lead, SD

05. The Allen

06. The Sunshine

07. The Grocery

08. The Wolf

09. The Mistake

10. The Parts

11. The Silence

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...