"My past is my past and a lot of The Glass Passenger is about that," says Jack's Mannequin frontman Andrew McMahon, "but it's also about trying to write myself out of it. This is a record about trying to get out from underneath something. I want people to receive the music for what it is and not have to contextualize it against my own personal battle."
That personal battle is the elephant in the room, so before we get to The Glass Passenger, the long-awaited second album from SoCal's pop-rock balladeers Jack's Mannequin, let's shove the pachyderm out of the way so we can move on, shall we?
The story goes like this: After his hard-working punk-pop quintet Something Corporate decided to take a break in the summer of 2004, McMahon found himself writing a batch of confessional piano-driven songs that explored his return home to Orange County and his attempt to reconnect with the people he had alienated when he left to tour with Something Corporate. With the help of several musician friends (which included producer Jim Wirt and Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee), McMahon began recording Everything in Transit under the moniker Jack's Mannequin.
In June 2005, the day he finished mastering the last song, then 22-year-old McMahon was diagnosed with leukemia. He was forced to postpone all music-related activities and immediately undergo chemotherapy, which led to a bout with pneumonia that nearly killed him. Two months later, on August 23rd, 2005, Maverick Records released the sardonic, sweetly melancholic Everything in Transit, which debuted at No. 37 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart and was well-received by both fans and critics. After going into remission following a stem-cell transplant from his sister, McMahon was able to make a full recovery. (His year-long journey is documented on Dear Jack, a raw, unflinching documentary he made about trying to release an album while battling illness.)
"The Glass Passenger is not about recovering from cancer," McMahon says. "it's just about recovering. I was trying to use the music to sort through and reconcile with the adversity of my past." With music as his emotional release, McMahon was able to inject his songs with an uplifting positivity that engages everyone he meets. The album's tone is set with the first single "The Resolution," which is about accessing the positive, and continues through the moody, layered "Swim" (about fighting for the goodness in life at all costs), the feel-good sing-along "American Love," and the propulsive "Spinning." McMahon's lush tenor voice and expressive piano playing underscore the lyrics' unabashed honesty. But while it is essentially autobiographical, The Glass Passenger is not meant to be interpreted as a direct description of McMahon's life, which is what makes it so universally powerful.
"I want to be able to relate to people when I write songs," McMahon says. "Part of what's driven me to make music is this idea of connection; taking my experiences and writing about them honestly, but in such a way that someone in a completely different situation can still relate to them. I wanted to make a record that wasn't exactly about what I had seen, but what I had felt along the way."
Co-produced by Jim Wirt (who produced Everything in Transit and who has also worked with Incubus and Hoobastank), The Glass Passenger was written and recorded over the course of the last two years, during which time Jack's Mannequin embarked on several tours, including the 22-city "Tour for the Cure," which raised more than $125,000 to benefit The Dear Jack Foundation — a non-profit organization founded by McMahon to fund cancer research. In 2007, the band made the rounds of the major summer festivals, including Summerfest and Lollapolloza, and contributed an inspired cover of John Lennon's "God" (with Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood on drums) to the charity CD Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur, which also featured such best-selling artists as U2, Green Day, and R.E.M. They also appeared at Coachella, the Bamboozle Festival, performed on the main stage of the Vans Warped Tour, and hit the road with Paramore over the summer.
McMahon could not be happier that The Glass Passenger is finally ready for the fans and everyone who supported him to hear. "The completion of this album and its release represents the closing of a chapter," he says. "It was a difficult time, but also one of immense hope. It was during this period that my music and my life were the most seamlessly bound together — a truth that makes this album's release far more pleasing for me than most could ever imagine."

#93 - Most Viewed (This Month) - Musicians