This should have come out last week if not for Blogger’s two-day hiatus.

Took a long road trip this weekend.  Started to grade music on a new scale.  The road trip scale.

I was surprised by how many of my favorite albums are not the most enjoyable to listen to while I’m driving a car.  Actually, I found myself skipping rapidly through them to get the songs I wanted to hear while avoiding the songs that were quickly putting me to sleep.  And this isn’t a knock at mellow albums, I still found the melodic pace of the xx and Bon Iver to be quite entertaining.  The Cure’s Wish was outstanding.  But while listening to a lot of my favorite albums, I found very little about them that I actually liked.  I struggled through DM’s Some Great Reward, DCFC’s Narrow Stairs, and The Killers Hot Fuss.  Oddly, I made it through Brandon Flowers solo album without skipping once.

Maybe some albums are just made with a different pace in mind.  Or maybe my frame of mind was in a different place.  Machester Orchestra’s new album kept pace with me on my two-day fourteen hour trip…so they must be doing something right.

Here are the 11 Best Songs By Manchester Orchestra:

1.  Wolves at Night (I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child)

2.  Shake It Out (Mean Everything To Nothing)

3.  In My Teeth (Mean Everything To Nothing)

4.  Alice and Interiors (I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child)

5.  The Only One (Mean Everything To Nothing)

6.  Where Have You Been? (I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child)

7.  Everything To Nothing (Mean Everything To Nothing)

8.  Anne Louise (Fourteen Years of Excellence)

9.  This Neighborhood Is Bleeding (I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child)

10.  Sleeper 1972 (I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child)

11.  I Was A Lid (Let My Pride Be What’s Left Behind)

Buy Manchester Orchestra’s new album, Simple Math, now!!