Manchester Orchestra, “The Million Masks of God.”

The Million Masks of God by Manchester Orchestra is a sweeping, film-like project that details feelings of grief and building something worthwhile from pain instead of letting pain define you. The band combines pared-back lyrics with progressive musical arrangements that swell and subside elegantly to create a complete listening experience. 

The band’s sixth studio album is the first since 2017’s conceptual project, A Black Mile to the Surface, which was set in a small mining town in South Dakota. The Million Masks of God, meanwhile, steps away from the Americana influence and revisits familiar indie rock styles woven through its catalog. As Manchester Orchestra widens its musical repertoire, it’s managed to create emotionally heavy stories that are well-worth indulging.

The album begins cinematically with “Inaudible,” where an instrumental opening leads to lyrics questioning if monetary gain and clout are actually how you find happiness in life. They’re vague at times. The band seems unsure if it’s right to believe this notion. “Now that you’re clawing the top and it’s taken your air/ Are you here but in some ways you vanished?” lead vocalist Andy Hull sings, the track finishing with a synthesized hum over the scratchy voice of a young boy.

“Keel Timing” and “Bed Head,” the singles, follow as the third and fourth tracks, respectively. Sonically tied together, “Keel Timing” serves as a prelude and depicts an internal war over what’s considered positive or negative growth. “There’s comfort in the constant quell/ Now I’m awake and I don’t know how,” Hull sings. The music kicks up in pace one final time during the outro as it bleeds into “Bed Head.” Here Hull attempts to purge his convoluted mind of the now-empty space next to him. “Let me extinguish, the habit, the sequence, the loss, in my mind,” he sings. Lyrically sparse but emotionally charged, the songs both hold their own while also uplifting each other.

Midway through The Million Masks of God, the band slows things down with “Annie,” a one-sided conversation with a woman from whom the narrator just can’t separate himself. He’s apparently not the only one, either. Drums and guitars kick the song off, as Hull sings of speaking with God in literally piercing lyrics. “You were a spear/ I was holding your head, you were watching me kneel,” he sings.  On “Telepath,” acoustic guitars and light piano keys accompany lyrics imagining one’s love as everything from an old apartment to a glorious morning and the road meant to travel down.

With “Way Back,” Manchester Orchestra is at its most acoustic and poetic. A single guitar picks a light melody while Hull’s light, whispery vocals move the track along. “Way back, way back,” he repeats, adding murmurs and vocal intonations that both comfort and calm. As harmonizing, backing vocals kick in, the tempo quickens for the bridge—where some of the album’s finest lyricism is found: “The only demand I could muster was begging you no, so know/ I’m moving to mute all my memories I made in that moat.” The lyrical alliteration is subtle yet undoubtedly elevates the verse.

The Million Masks of God concludes with the ambient and engrossing “The Internet,” a story of a love so absorbing it’s like a night spent binging Netflix… or deep in Wikipedia articles. Guitars are sprinkled between verses, only to then take over halfway through for an explosive bridge composed entirely of words with the prefix “un”—untie, unframe, untrain, untame—anything to separate narrator and his partner. Slowing once more as the young boy’s voice returns to tell of learning your lesson after losing sheep to the wolves, it’s clear Hull is waiting for answers from both himself and his lover.