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Andrew McMahon
recent reviews
Three Pianos
Andrew McMahon
Three Pianos: A Memoir
Something Corporate
Leaving Through The Window
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Upside Down Flowers
Jack's Mannequin
The Glass Passenger
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Zombies on Broadway
andrew-mcmahon
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recent interviews
Andrew McMahon
Andrew McMahon
Craig Manning interviews Andrew McMahon about his latest album, 'Zombies on Broadway.'
Andrew McMahon
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Jonathan Bautts interviews Andrew McMahon about his new Wilderness project.
Andrew McMahon of Jack's Mannequin
Jonathan Bautts interviews Andrew McMahon about 'People and Things.'
Andrew McMahon
Andrew McMahon of Jack's Mannequin
Jonathan Bautts interviews Andrew McMahon about the Dear Jack Foundation.
Andrew Mcmahon
Andrew McMahon of Jack's Mannequin
AbsolutePunk talks with Andrew McMahon before the release of 'The Glass Passenger.'

Review: Andrew McMahon – Three Pianos: A Memoir

Three Pianos
Adam Grundy

Andrew McMahon sounds like a man who’s been through some really tough situations. From a childhood filled with several moves to different parts of the country, to his dad’s battle with addiction, and his steadfast love for the music that got him through it all, McMahon crafts a tangled web of stories that he divides up into three book sections based on three pianos that have meant something to him at different points of his life and career. Three Pianos: A Memoir is a fairly quick reading experience, especially for those familiar with McMahon’s musical references in his bands of Something Corporate, Jack’s Mannequin, and lastly Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness. This only speaks to his ability as an author to convey such rich, vivid memories from an emotional standpoint that led him to be the man that he is today. As McMahon puts it in his memoir, referencing the transition between Jack’s Mannequin and the start of a new adventure in The Wilderness Years, “Starting over at twenty is easy. At thirty it’s a test of your mettle.” Battling through a leukemia diagnosis, to navigating through several starts and stops in his musical journey, McMahon never lets his difficult story seem hopeless. Instead, he provides a beacon of hope for others to keep pressing on when we reach our own breaking point.

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Review: Something Corporate – Leaving Through The Window

Craig Manning

“Write what you know.” That piece of advice has been given countless times to countless writers across countless different mediums, from books to films to TV shows. It’s not a bad tip, especially for greener storytellers, but it can also be limiting. In the world of songwriting, especially, one of the great joys is how a song can allow you to inhabit someone else’s life for a few minutes, or to experience a world other than your own. There’s something exhilarating about when a talented songwriter steps outside their own life to take a walk in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Springsteen writing a bunch of songs about killers and criminals on Nebraska or Taylor Swift closing her own diary to explore character on folklore and evermore. Still, for some writers, the “Write what you know” mantra is the gateway to brilliance, and few young songwriters ever took it more seriously than Andrew McMahon did on Something Corporate’s 2002 major label debut, Leaving Through the Window.

McMahon turned 19 on September 3, 2001. A few months later, on the day after Christmas, he and his bandmates commenced recording for the album that would become their big breakthrough statement. By January, the album was done, and on May 7, 2002, it hit the streets. McMahon was still four months shy of his 20th birthday, and less than two years out of high school. Rather than try to write songs that hid his youth, McMahon embraced it. The result was one of the greatest and most authentic albums ever made about teen angst, growing up, and coming of age. Leaving Through the Window is now older than McMahon was when the record came out, but it remains gripping and beautiful due to how timeless the themes and stories proved to be.

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Review: Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness – Upside Down Flowers

Craig Manning

When Andrew McMahon announced his new LP, Upside Down Flowers, he referred to the album’s producer, Butch Walker, as a “fellow traveler.” That word choice was fitting, because if one word could describe McMahon over the 20 years that have so far encompassed his career, “traveler” is it. McMahon has made a lot of types of records over the years. He’s made emo-flecked piano rock records and sunny pop-punk records. He’s made Americana-influenced road trip records and towering stadium pop records. He’s made records about California and records about New York. He made one of the ultimate records about living young and free, followed by a record about almost dying young. He’s traversed a lot of territory over the course of eight LPs and three very distinct chapters. But he’s never made a record quite like Upside Down Flowers before, a record that is, ostensibly, about a traveler looking back and taking stock of where he’s been so far.

Upside Down Flowers is the most outwardly nostalgic album that McMahon has ever made. He’s written about the past before, but never in such detail or with such a storyteller’s eye. The first song on the album is called “Teenage Rockstars,” and it’s an unabashed tribute to McMahon’s bandmates from the Something Corporate days. The second song is called “Ohio,” and it vividly recounts the drive that transplanted his family from Ohio to the west coast—right down to the band that was playing on the car stereo. Listening to these songs feels like sitting next to McMahon on a couch, flipping through a photo album of old polaroids and hearing him recount the adventures and misadventures depicted in each. It’s a kind of intimacy we haven’t heard from him before.

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Review: Jack’s Mannequin – The Glass Passenger

Craig Manning

“Even if your voice comes back again/Maybe there’ll be no one listening.”

The morning I climbed into my car to drive myself to the first day of my last year of high school, those lyrics punched me straight in the gut. I was reeling from a broken heart, given to me by a girl who’d occupied my mind all summer long. A few months earlier, she would have been walking the same high school halls that I was driving toward that morning. But she’d graduated and was now two hours south, probably waking up for her first day of college classes. Things hadn’t worked out between us, and if I’d been smart, I would have realized three months earlier that they were never going to. I didn’t, and now I was nursing a few fresh wounds and the prospect of facing down one last year of high school without her and without all the other friends who had left this town behind. “Crashin” was the song playing on the stereo, but it was a line from Andrew McMahon’s previous album that might have been most appropriate: “Hold on/It’s gonna be a hard day.”

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Review: Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness – Zombies on Broadway

Craig Manning

Andrew McMahon is an artist who has had a very loyal and passionate following for a very long time. Starting with Something Corporate, which offered a piano-led twist on the emo/pop-punk trends of the early 2000s, McMahon has been regarded as a master of melody and a writer capable of churning out fiercely relatable songs. Suffice to say that BuzzFeed hit the nail on the head (for the first and last time) when it labeled “Konstantine” as the emo “Freebird.” When McMahon transitioned his career from Something Corporate into the poppier and more mature Jack’s Mannequin, it was a testament to his talent as a songwriter, his likability as a performer, and the strong personal resonance of his work that just about all of his fans were willing to go along for the ride.

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