iSound

“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 fr...