Lively rocker McMahon anything but a mannequin

The Glass Passenger, the second album from former Something Corporate frontman Andrew McMahon’s… The Glass Passenger, the second album from former Something Corporate frontman Andrew McMahon’s new band Jack’s Mannequin, comes from a far deeper place than most records ‘mdash; it was written following his successful recovery from leukemia. The Glass Passenger explores all the complex emotions invoked by his illness while staying true to his pop roots. McMahon took time out of promoting the new album for a quick chat with The Pitt News. The Pitt News: The name of your new album, The Glass Passenger, came from a song lyric that isn’t on the album. How did you decide to keep it? Andrew McMahon: I never ended up finishing that song, but I wrote that lyric down and it just resonated. The whole line was ‘Keep your eyes on the road / I’m a glass passenger / And I sing for a traveling band.’ Those three words that just seemed so loaded and so charged. Then as the album and the writing process progressed, it seemed to really speak to the record as a whole and a lot of the themes in the album. TPN: What were the main influences on the difference in sound from Jack’s Mannequin’s debut Everything in Transit to the new album? AM: I think the approach alone was pretty different in itself. With Everything in Transit, there was this organic development and kind of free flow, more of a stream of consciousness thing really. It was never intended to be a record, just thrown together. This time I knew I was making a record, so the bar got raised. TPN: Do you have a favorite song off this album or a favorite to perform? AM: My favorites change from day to day as it kind of sinks in. ‘Crashin” was the breakthrough song, it’s really what began the album, which is why it’s the first track. There was a moment where I sat down and was like, ‘You’re writing a record, start writing this record,’ and that pushed me through. But, you know, you make a record, it’s like having a kids. You love them all for all their different qualities, and you can’t pull one aside and say, ‘This is my favorite.’ TPN: What do you hope people will take away from The Glass Passenger; is there a message you want to come across? AM: The album is an exploration on hope from what I consider to be some exceedingly hopeless places. A big part of what went into this was my re-acclimation to the world. I had idealized what the world would be while I was sick, I assumed I would just wake up well and live in utopia or some sort of perfect place. So I think a lot of the record is me adjusting to the real world and reintegrating to a normal lifestyle after what had been a very dramatic set of years through the recovery. I wanted to be truthful about some of the reality I was facing. TPN: I saw you crowd surf at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia a few years ago. Is that a tradition? AM: Ah, the infamous crowd surf to barricade, I remember that. I used to do it every show, but it started to get predictable so I started doing it a little less. Still, if the crowd seems so inclined, I will take a dive.