// Courtesy of Tatum Richardson

A lot can change in ten years, or so I’ve heard. I’ve only just finished two decades on this great green earth, so reflecting on 2014 feels a bit like trying to talk in class after skipping all the readings. How was I, a ten-year-old, spending my year?

Well, there was the ice bucket challenge making rounds on everyone’s brand-new Instagram accounts. There was the incessant ringing of “Happy” by Pharell Williams, and, apparently, a global crash in oil prices. And for Manchester Orchestra, there was the release of their fourth studio album, COPE. I can’t say I listened back then, but, here I am now, in 2024, standing in the House of Blues to hear the band play the album in its entirety. 

For a touch of novelty, MO brings on Militarie Gun as an opener, a band best explained as a mix of contradictions. Here is a punk band, from sunny LA, wearing collared shirts and playing Stratocasters. “This one goes out to my friends who are having a hard time,” says the lead singer. The song, titled “My Friends Are Having a Hard Time,” is certainly about friends having a hard time. Something about the band reminds me of Vampire Weekend, but if Hannah Hunt read the Post instead of the Times. They’re young, eager, and trying to mosh in a crowd full of former moshers. I wish them the best. Perhaps they’ll be back in ten years, and I’ll be the old one. 

Manchester Orchestra takes the stage, and the sound engineers turn the volume up to what I can only hope is maximum. In a press interview for the album, lead singer Andy Hull explained: "We wanted to make the kind of album that's missing at this time in rock: something that's just brutal and pounding you over the head every track.” Brutal? Perhaps. Pounding? Certainly. As the bass drum starts to slowly decay my ear drum, I wonder what ten years of rocking does to one’s hearing. There’s a dad next to me, with his young daughter clad in full ear protection. At what age do we give up and accept hearing loss as part of the fun?

One thing’s for sure: live ten years and you don’t get any better at handling your alcohol. Next to us, a guy spills his Portland Pale Ale all over himself. A fight breaks out on the other side of the audience. “Can we all be grown-ups here?” asks Hull. I mean, c’mon, this is Natural Light behavior. 

I realize I’m a proponent of the full-album playthrough. It’s dynamic, it’s ranging. The band transitions from acoustic to electric, then back to acoustic again. You can tell that the band is practiced; for an album as heavy and crunchy as COPE, everything sounds immaculately tight. On the last song, they rock out the hardest. The crowd demands more. An impressive five-song encore ensues, and a crowd surfer emerges. “My back!” I hear as he returns to an upright position.

As they close, I ask myself if rock really is dead. This summer, I saw the Rolling Stones, who appeared almost like holograms of their younger selves. Processing this, I lamented all the years, all the scenes, I missed out on. But here in Boston, Manchester Orchestra keeps things fresh. Rock might not be young, in any sense of the word, but it’s certainly still kicking. It’s kicking, drinking IPAs, and processing its own early onset hearing loss.

// Molly Egan ’26 is a staff writer for Record Hospital.