Andy Hull is putting out an anthology CD which contains all four of the albums from his Right Away, Great Captain! project. For those of you unfamiliar with the Manchester Orchestra man’s solo work, Right Away, Great Captain! has recorded three full albums of sparse folk music, as well as a collection of B-sides and demos. We wrote about the project back in 2012 after the release of the final album:
Through both lyrics and tone of voice he illustrates the joy, grief, desperation and downright loneliness of human relationships. Themes straight out of the classics; love and hate, forgiveness and revenge. The albums are about being far away from what you care about and our struggles to return. They are about our inability to appreciate the the thoughts and motives of others
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For those who aren’t familiar, The Bitter End, The Eventually Home and The Church Of The Good Thief are a trilogy of concept albums based around the travels, and subsequent return, of a nameless sailor and father who retreats to sea after discovering his wife and brother are having an affair. The journey is an epic one, written in novelistic detail that surpasses the overwhelming majority of albums – tracing the sailor’s time at sea (and his relationship with the captain of the ship before the mentor dies) and his return to land, where he falls to an opiate addiction and mental breakdown. All the while the sailor harbours the grudge against his loved ones, something which blossoms into violence by the time of the third album.
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The albums are a study in loneliness and isolation, tracking the effects of betrayal on a man too deeply in love to cope. The first album sees a recognisable (albeit severe) sense of angst and grief, but this warps into something more sinister by the end, with the protagonist unable to get off his ship to greet his family for fear that he will kill them all. Drugs and confinement further detach him from reality and logic on the second album, where things get weird and stray from the typical tortured romantic you might have been expecting. Indeed, by the finale the tale resembles a Shakespearean tragedy, so deeply bitter and sad you get the sense that death is the only possible conclusion.
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If you like your music with a detailed and sprawling narrative, Right Away, Great Captain! will be the project for you. You can buy the RAGC Anthology now from the Right Away, Great Captain! Bandcamp page.