"There is nothing I've got when I die that I keep."

I never knew Maryland was so green. Emerald forests dot the countryside to and from Ocean Pines, a serene setting for a cinematic soundtrack like A Black Mile to the Surface. Andy Hull originally titled Manchester Orchestra's fifth studio album "There is nothing I've got when I die that I keep." It summarizes the narrative crisis for the album, though no doubt, A Black Mile to the Surface stands as a better title rather than a perfect summary. In this essay, I will tease out the setting & major themes of A Black Mile to the Surface and argue that you should listen to this album, start to finish, at least once in your lifetime.

The narrator's voice weaves in & out of focus, and it is often unclear from each line to the next who is actually speaking. Set in Lead, South Dakota, perhaps the topographical opposite of rural Maryland, the narrator speaks through several generations of a mining family. In a series of abstract scenes situated in each song, interspersed with Andy Hull's personal musings & experiences, the narrators wrestle to find any hope in dark places. Through it all, each narrator copes through a desire for real change in a cycle of family dysfunction. You see marriages falling apart, the shaming of disability & disfigurement, the loss of a parent, an attempted suicide, doxologies to a loved one, and car crashes. In this nexus of hoping-dysfunction-coping rests the nascent question: what do I leave behind when I'm gone?

The first utterance of "There is nothing I've got when I die that I keep" comes from an unlikely narrator. A Black Mile to the Surface opens with an exchange between Andy Hull & his daughter.

I notice you when you're noticing me.

Breaking the habit, you're watching me sleep

Oh, give me some time, let me learn how to speak

I'm a maze to you

Wish me a wonder & wish me to sleep

You don't have to wander to hear when I speak

There is nothing I've got when I die that I keep

It's amazing

As I mentioned, it is a bit tricky to nail down exactly which voice is speaking in each line. However, I take these lines (verses 1 & 3) to be spoken by Andy's daughter. If she is speaking, then the childlike response to "There is nothing I've got when I die that I keep" is amazement. Why is this the case?

The opening & closing tracks bracket dark scenes where the imagery of a mine & the long, messy road out into light is enfleshed in the life of the family. Rather than detail the journey of each scene from the album, I will fast forward to the ending crescendo. (However, here is the link to each song from A Black Mile to the Surface. Every scene offers a different chapter in the life of the mining family in Lead, SD, so each is important to the album arc.) "The Silence" finishes with perhaps the messiest weaving of Andy Hull's own experiences & those of the characters. And in the end, right before the final flourish, he sings:

There is nothing you keep, there is only your reflection

Having raised the questions, the answer of A Black Mile to the Surface is as clear as it is painful. Hull has heard that unspeakable love awaits for those who believe, but his experience shows only the same desires, same dysfunctions, same hopes reflected in those you leave behind. Nothing is sure except the reflection you leave behind on your children. At heart, A Black Mile to the Surface speaks to the fear of being caught in the same cycles, sins, & shit of your family. Yet the innocent, childlike response of Andy Hull's daughter in "The Maze" shows nascent hope in dark dysfunction. A reflection is a gift, something you leave behind & cannot take with you. A father's love for his daughter motivates Hull to believe, at very least, he may begin to leave a brighter road to hope for his daughter.

There was nothing but quiet retractions And families pleading, "Don't look in that cabinet There's far more bad than there's good, I don't know how it got there" That was something your father had burned in me Twenty hours out of Homestake eternity "You can go anywhere but you are where you came from" Little girl, you are cursed by my ancestry There is nothing but darkness and agony I can not only see, but you stopped me from blinking Let me watch you as close as a memory Let me hold you above all the misery Let me open my eyes and be glad that I got here