Jack's Mannequin, 'The Glass Passenger'

Backstory: Orange County native Andrew McMahon brought piano to the emo-punk crowds during his early-decade work in Something Corporate. His newer group, Jack’s Mannequin, strips out a bit of the guitar bombast, but adds a real emotional heft—many of the songs on “The Glass Passenger” deal with the singer’s response to being diagnosed with leukemia in 2005.
 
Why you should care: Some call it whining, but the yearning and emotional tug in McMahon’s voice feels legit. And, outside of the oddly disjointed, seemingly out-of-tune opener (“Crashin”), the majority of “The Glass Passenger” takes the piano-guitar-drums format and busts it wide open, delivering a sound that’s pleasantly hard to classify.

Verdict: It is, admittedly, a bit odd to hear McMahon talk of the “dark punk rock clubs of a thousand American towns” during the maudlin, orchestral “Hammers and Strings (A Lullaby).” But it works, as does the more rock-ish “Drop Out,” the noisy “Suicide Blonde” and the somewhat arbitrary ‘80s pop-rock of “American Love,” which kind of sounds like Eddie Money with a dash of DeBarge (ask your dad). Overall, disjointed, but McMahon’s emotional gravitas keeps the wildly shifting sonics grounded.
 
X-Factor: Green Day, U2, R.E.M. and…Jack’s Mannequin? Yep, you can find them all together on one album. Last year McMahon collaborated with Mick Fleetwood on a cover of John Lennon’s “God,” available on the superstar collection “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur.”

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