Celebrating the release of their new album The Million Masks Of God with a The Late Show with Stephen Colbert #PlayAtHome performance, Manchester Orchestra today unleash a blistering live rendition of their new hit “Bed Head”; watch it HERE. The band—Andy Hull, Robert McDowell, Tim Very, and Andy Prince, together with touring member Brooks Tipton—here deliver a fiery, festival-ready performance, filmed by Justin Fredericks and Stephen Payne at Asheville, NC’s Echo Mountain Recording studios, where the album was recorded. “Bed Head” continues to rise at radio, this week breaking the Top 5 at Triple A radio, reaching the Top 25 on the Alternative charts, and topping the SiriusXM Alt Nation’s ‘Alt 18 Countdown’ chart for a fourth week.
Yesterday, Hull and McDowell also debuted acoustic versions of three songs from the album on Comedy Bang Bang’s12th anniversary special that also featured special guests Jason Mantzoukas, Ego Nwodim, Paul F. Tompkins, Lilly Sullivan, and more. Manchester Orchestra–whose new LP is earning the Atlanta-based band their best reviews to date, as well as features at Stereogum, NPR Music (All Songs Considered), Uproxx, SPIN, American Songwriter, and more–will return to the national TV stage this weekend to perform on CBS This Morning: Saturday Sessions on May 8th.
Produced by Manchester Orchestra’s lead songwriting duo of Hull and McDowell, Catherine Marks (PJ Harvey, The Killers) and Ethan Gruska (Phoebe Bridgers), The Million Masks Of God presents an even grander scale of the epic and re-focused approach to record-making that the Atlanta, GA-based band has forged in recent years. Their sixth album finds Hull, McDowell, Tim Very (drums), and Andy Prince (bass) relentlessly pushing themselves to create a work that breaks beyond the scope and limits of every previous release in an effort to create their most towering achievement to date, all while sorting through the aftermath of a devastating loss.
Manchester Orchestra approached Masks with the intention of creating tightly-woven “movie albums” designed to be listened to in sequence and in a single sitting, with the songs working together to tell a bold, long-form narrative. The album explores the loose story of a man’s encounter with the angel of death as he’s shown various scenes from his life in a snapshot-style assemblage. Some moments he witnesses are good, some are bad, some difficult, some commendable—in other words, they depict an entirely normal life. Ultimately, The Million Masks of God is a compelling, heady, and profound look at the impact a person’s life has on others.