Andy Hull with Casey Crescenzo, and Nathan Hussey @ Brighton Music Hall

Andy Hull with Casey Crescenzo, and Nathan Hussey – Brighton Music Hall 4/7

“We’ve been calling this tour the Beard Brothers,” said Nathan Hussey, of All Get Out, when he took the stage. All three performers on this acoustic tour, Andy Hull (Manchester Orchestra), Casey Crescenzo (The Dear Hunter/TREOS), and Hussey, sport thick and gorgeous beards. Lucky bastards.

After Hussey’s set, Crescenzo took the stage and played some of The Dear Hunter songs. Someone asked him to play “This Armistice,” a song from his former band, The Receiving End of Sirens. He responded by saying playing that song was like “carrying around a picture of an ex-girlfriend in your wallet and pulling it out to show people that was who you were.” Needless to say, we did not hear any TREOS songs from him. Crescenzo did tell the story of the first time he and Andy Hull met. The first thing they did upon meeting was to wrestle one another. Later, he talked about how Hull invited him down to Atlanta to record The Color Spectrum, and how without Hull, he’s not sure he would have ever finished it.

When Hull came out, he launched right into the Hope version of “Top Notch.” He played a nice mix of songs from all four of Manchester Orchestra’s albums and Right Away, Great Captain songs. From I’m Like A Virgin Losing a Child he played “Wolves at Night,” “I Can Feel Your Pain,” and later in the show, “Colly Strings.” The Right Away, Great Captain songs like “I Was A Cage,” and a really old one, “I’m Not Ready To Forgive You,” were powerful and great. The audience could feel The Sailor in the RAGC trilogy’s pain and frustration emitting through Hull’s vocals.

Hull also played Bad Books’ (his band with Kevin Devine) song “Pyotr.” He explained that it’s about the Russian Czar Pyotr, who finds out his wife is cheating on him. The Czar then cuts off the head of his wife’s lover and puts it in a jar and makes his wife spend time with it every day. Real light, whimsical stuff.

Hull then depicted story of the song, “After the Scripture” (used in the movie Dallas Buyers Club). There was a Manchester Orchestra fan dying of cancer, and Andy got to play at her prom. He played her “I Can Feel Your Pain,” a song she listened to during chemotherapy. After she had passed, her father asked Andy and the rest of Manchester to come to their house and play after her memorial service. He wrote “After the Scripture” about the experience of playing her memorial. It was a powerful story about music’s effect on people, and really put Hull in a very human light.

After that, Hull played “Play It Again Sam, You Don’t Have Any Feathers,” an old song from an unreleased Manchester Orchestra record that has surfaced on the Internet as Nobody Sings Anymore. Crescenzo came back to the stage to play “Deny It All – Red,” a song from The Color Spectrum Hull is featured on. Hull ended the show with “Untitled (Blue)” from the Summer Demos. The song opens with, “If you don’t, love me someone will.” Well, we love you, Andy.

By Evan Frye