Manchester Orchestra release new documentary & demos EP, prep new 7"

Last year, Manchester Orchestra released their best album in a while, A Black Mile to the Surface, and today they released a documentary on the making of the album called I Know How To Speak (directed by Ted Roach) and an EP with six demos from the album. You can watch the documentary via a “unique, immersive digital experience” on the band’s website, and the trailer is below. You can also stream all of the demos below. Here’s what frontman Andy Hull says about the two new projects:

It’s been nearly one year since we released A Black Mile To The Surface. Since then, so many beautiful things have happened… A worldwide tour of playing these songs to our incredible fans, who have embraced this album in the most heartfelt way and truly moved us beyond words. We are currently in the middle of the craziest summer schedule we’ve had as a band, playing amazing festivals to wonderful crowds all over America, and having more fun than ever.

Today we are releasing two projects at once, something that we have never done before. First, a fly on the wall glimpse of the process of making this album — the good and the bad, the ups and the downs. I Know How to Speak encompasses the wide range of emotions that the studio process brings, and we hope you enjoy seeing the work behind the scenes. We are also releasing a collection of these songs’ original demos in their earliest, rawest form. The Black Mile Demos are the seeds of how this all started. The initial, rough-around-the edges recordings, done with one microphone in some distant and often strange locations before they were continued to be worked on in Asheville, NC at Echo Mountain studio.

“I Know How To Speak” is also the name of the band’s non-album single which recently came out digitally, and which gets released as a limited edition 7″ on August 3 (there’s also a demo of the song on the new EP). Of “I Know How To Speak,” Andy said:

This song was originally and roughly formed a few years ago about the impending weight of the future. It almost made it onto Black Mile, but hadn’t fully formed yet. We spent some solid time this year revisiting and reworking and recording the song into it’s final state. I found it inspiring to work on this song right before the birth of my son, which was and is beautiful impending weight.

Listen to that song below as well.