24 Hours Vancouver Interview

24 seconds with Jack's Mannequin
By Joe Leary
Source

Formed by Andrew McMahon as a side project to his then group, 'Something Corporate', Jack's Mannequin are already two albums in, having released 'The Glass Passenger' about a year ago; the follow-up to their acclaimed 2005 debut, 'Everything in Transit'.

During a recent tour stop through Vancouver, Joe Leary spent 24 Seconds with Andrew McMahon.

24: What I like about your music is that despite the fact there might be some intrinsic message in the lyrics, you really seem to understand that music should be melodic and have a good feel to it. That's what you do well.

AM: I appreciate you noticing that; it's sort of my mission in a lot of ways.

24: What went into the writing process for 'The Glass Passenger'?

AM: A lot went into it. I think, for me growing up, writing music has always just sort of been an instinct, a gut reaction. With 'Passenger', I think the way it timed itself in my life and as it related to a lot of things in my personal life, it was a harder record to write. I was struggling with a little bit of a lack of confidence; kind of following up from getting sick and then getting well, it would bring so many questions into your head, I almost over-analyzed everything.

So I had to wait for these little moments of hope and these little moments of confidence where I would just breakthrough and a song would just come out and it couldn't be stopped - finding that instinct took a little bit longer.

24: You went through a relatively serious health crisis in 2005 and 'Everything in Transit' was released soon after. Was that somewhat of a catharsis for you?

AM: It was and it wasn't. It wasn't really written about that at all because the writing and recording of that record pre-dated anything that happened as far as my illness was concerned.

There was sort of this weird premonition throughout so many of those songs that referred to getting sick and doctors and hospitals and all these things that ended up really kind of being my life for a couple of years after it, so there was this sense of fate to that record.

With this new album, it was sort of the flip side; it was being on the other side of all of that. Having made 'Transit' and I was so proud of that and then being here in this strange moment and trying to reacclimatize. In a lot of ways 'Transit' and 'Passenger' are about very similar things; just handling different crises that propelled them, I suppose.