“Simple Math”
from the album Simple Math
2011
iTunes
With Simple Math, their third LP, due May 10, Manchester Orchestra are offering fans a sneak peak at what’s to come by releasing the title track as the album’s first single. The five-minute track builds from a quiet and haunting beginning to a soaring, beautiful peak, and as frontman Andy Hull explains it, is a look at the complexities involved in infidelity.
“‘Simple Math,’ that song is fictional, and the verses are a kind of storytelling of what I think an affair would be like; the stirring emotion of temptation and lust,” Hull tells Spinner. “The chorus is written more spiritually, so that’s where the lyrics say ‘What if all we thought was right was wrong?’ [It’s] the scary idea of ‘Oh God, what if I’ve been believing the wrong thing forever?’ That’s sort of what the record title means.”