You Crazy Dreamers

Some of you may be familiar with Andy Hull as the frontman for the Atlanta-based Manchester Orchestra. For his solo career Andy goes by the name of “Right Away, Great Captain“….I’ve only discovered Andy and Manchester Orchestra fairly recently thanks to a music buddy who turned me on to both of them. (Thanks Sean!)

Andy recorded “The Bitter End” back in August of 2006 over a span of 3 days in a 100 year old log cabin near Bastian, VA. While I am perfectly aware this isn’t a “new” release, this album is just too good not to write about for those of you who have never heard of Andy. Please, do yourself a favor and go out and purchase this album as soon as possible.

The bitter end is a concept record. It is about a “1600’s sailor at sea for 3 years. Each song is a journal entry to either his family at home, or his captain.”

Andy explained the store behind the album on his myspace blog:

so anyways, allot of you have been asking about the concept behind the “right away, great captain!” record. and i have just been lazy or busy and pushed off writing out the entire concept out in one full form. i have had the ideas, lyrics, and parts of the record written in several different areas, napkins, binders, and text edit files, so i went through all of them and compiled what i think is the most accurate description of this story is, in reality and in the idea of it being a greater story about something more personal to myself then the actual story behind it all. so with that being said, here it goes.

I wrote this record as the first part of a three part story, although it sounds pretentious, i promise that was not what i had in mind, it was more of a challenge. often in my writing i get very distracted and want to move on to another subject. choosing to do this record was for me the challenge to see if i could write a story that could not be summed up in one record, and to continue it on over three. So with that being said, this is in a sense the first of three RAGC records i am planning to release in the next years. BUT…This record begins sometime in the 1600’s, more mid century than beginning or end. Before i go into songs and meanings, etc… i will say that this entire record is written cronologically. meaning that each song from 1-15 is written in order of the story. Let’s begin.

The first song “Oh Deceiver” begins the record from the perspective of our lead character. He is leaving home for 3 years like most sailors did at the time. what fascinated me about creating this record was the idea of love and heartbreak taking place in a society that did not revolve around instant gratification. where now if you are heartbroken all you have to do is check the respective others personal website or blog to see if they are missing you. make a phone call, or ask your friends how they are doing. For me, i loved the idea of having a person so broken inside that they were forced to allow themselves to go insane. which i in turn actually think is very important for allot of us to do. Your brain has to be able to think in order for good things to happen. For me it was moving to this cabin for a few days away from everything but electricty to plug in the recording equipment. no phones, internet, or contact with anybody but jeremiah and jonathan. this helped all of our brains get into a state that was entirely focused on the songs, and the music, with no other distractions. so with that being said, the lead character sees his wife and his brother committing adultery against him. He sees this from the window of his home, they thought he would be gone for hours, but in fact he wasn’t. He saw them, never spoke a word to either, kissed his daughters, and left… for 3 years.

The following 8 songs are really just him dealing with normal feelings of being betrayed. the feeling of loss….

To read the rest of his explaination on the album, click here.

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