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Everything in Transit
Studio album by Jack's Mannequin
Released	August 23, 2005
Recorded	4th Street Recording (Santa Monica, California)
Genre	Rock, piano rock
Length	45:33
Label	Maverick Records
Producer(s)	Andrew McMahon, Jim Wirt
Professional reviews
Absolutepunk.net (86%) link All Music Guide link Alternative Addiction link EmotionalPunk.com (9/10) link IGN (7.2/10) link PopMatters (5/10) link

Everything in Transit is the debut album of Jack's Mannequin. It was released on August 23, 2005 on Maverick Records.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Track listing 2.1 Bonus tracks 3 Track discussion 4 Credits 5 References 6 External links

Everything in Transit may be considered a concept album, that tells the story of McMahon finally coming home after years of nonstop touring with his band Something Corporate and getting re-accustomed to everyday life and a settled abode in Los Angeles, California. The songs were written during his first summer in years outside of the band, which McMahon spent scribbling lyrics and accompanying drawings into a private sketchbook, selected pages of which can be accessed through a web-link to a secret homepage on the enhanced CD portion of the album. The song meanings are at times more cryptic than one might be used from McMahon's Something Corporate songs, as the lyrics describe a more personal view on feelings and situations and all take advantage of a first person's narrative style.

The project took almost two years from the first songs being written and recorded to the final product hitting the music store shelves. McMahon spent more than $40,000 of his own savings on the production, before being picked up by Maverick Records.

On the day he finished mastering the last song for the album (about two months before its scheduled release date), McMahon was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, forcing him to immediately undergo chemotherapy and to stop touring and promoting his record's release. However, he wished that, even though he would be confined to bed for the next months, the CD should be released as planned. Maverick Records decided to postpone promoting the album until McMahon's recovery. Under the given circumstances, receiving close to no promotion, it still managed to debut at #37 of the Billboard 200 with 22,163 copies sold within the week of its release.

The album was re-released on October 17, 2006, including a bonus DVD of various live performances by Jack's Mannequin and links to unreleased tracks, such as a mastered version of "Last Straw".

(all songs written by Andrew McMahon)

1. "Holiday from Real" – 2:58
2. "The Mixed Tape" – 3:14
3. "Bruised" – 4:02
4. "I'm Ready" – 3:55
5. "La La Lie" – 3:54
6. "Dark Blue" – 4:11
7. "Miss Delaney" – 3:44
8. "Kill the Messenger" – 3:24
9. "Rescued" – 3:56
10. "MFEO Pt. 1 (Made for Each Other) / Pt. 2 (You Can Breathe)" – 8:01
11. "Into the Airwaves" (bonus track) – 4:07

The album as available at Apple's iTunes Music Store contains a twelfth song, "Lonely for Her", which was cut from the album at the last minute (unmastered advance copies, given out to radio stations, music magazines, etc., still carried the song), because McMahon felt it would not fit in with the remainder of the songs. The Japanese version (released on April 12, 2006), on the other hand, features the bonus track "The Lights and Buzz".

The record's inaugural song, "Holiday from Real", is an easygoing, mellow song about McMahon's casual day-to-day life in Venice. In retrospect, opening with the lines "She thinks I'm much too thin/She asks me if I'm sick" certainly gives the album a macabre touch: It would be its first, but oddly enough not its last coincidental reference to disease, doctors or hospitals, foreshadowing McMahon's leukemia diagnosis in June 2005. On April 26, 2005, Maverick Records released the "Holiday from Real" 7 inch vinyl single in the United States. The A-side featured the title track, while the B-side featured the album version and an acoustic version of "Kill the Messenger".

"The Mixed Tape", the first single off the album, is a piano-driven pop punk song with a slightly melancholy undertone about McMahon compiling the perfect mixtape. The music video to the song, directed by Michael Perlmutter and Full Tank, was filmed while McMahon was being treated at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, therefore contains very few shots of him, but consists of an animated collage of the album artwork, a traced McMahon singing and playing the piano and some rendered 3D models. A second music video, starring Hilarie Burton, was filmed in January 2006 and released to coincide with McMahon's cameo appearance on One Tree Hill.

"Bruised" tells a story of the plane flight home after a four day vacation and a sad goodbye at the airport terminal. McMahon has stated this one to be his favorite song on the record.^[1]

Kicking off with the sentence "And today was a day just like any other," the fourth track "I'm Ready" can be roughly described as a fast paced song about returning to routine after a breakup, with a lyrically simple, yet highly addictive chorus ("I'm ready, I'm ready to drop/I'm ready, I'm ready so don't stop"). In addition, "I'm Ready" contains a bridge that is written in prose, describing the trivialities of a typical morning in the life of McMahon.

From the accordion-driven intro of "La La Lie", McMahon dives right into the story of being apart from his love until next summer and relying on his friends to make the months go by faster. The liner notes appropriately list these friends as Adam Trejo, Brent Sinay, Jen Levett, Jay McMillan, Bobby "Raw" Anderson, Ricky Tubb, Abbey the intern, Pete Martinez and P.J. Smith. The last time the chorus of the song is sung, these friends can be heard singing along. The song also features a harmonica solo by McMahon. When first written, the song was originally titled "West Coast Winter" and featured a different chorus. The original demo was released in late 2006 on the band's website. Part of its lyrics had since been adapted in the B-side "The Lights and Buzz".

"Dark Blue" was the last song recorded for the CD. With the lines meshing in the verses and the choruses repeating, it is a catchy love song about the months McMahon and his fiancée (now wife) spent separated from one another.^[2] The song title is in reference to a blue lightbulb used in the bedroom he shared with her in their Arizona home. The Something Corporate song "She Paints Me Blue" is taken from the same idea.^{[citation needed]} The music video, released on September 7, 2006, takes place at the site of a dance marathon in Venice anno 1950.

The song "Miss Delaney" deals with a love triangle between McMahon, a girl named Arin Delaney and her other boyfriend. It is about getting even with her, as she apparently was keeping her boyfriend a secret from McMahon. It has a very obvious Beach Boys quality to it, one of McMahon's major influences for the album.

"Kill the Messenger", which was previously released on the Drive-Thru Records and PureVolume compilation Bands You Love, Have Heard of, and Should Know, McMahon finds himself reminiscing about a chance missed to articulate his feelings towards a girl. A quite sparse accompaniment in the verses, thoroughly metaphorical lyrics and slightly painful vocal melodies highlight "Kill the Messenger" as arguably the darkest song on the record.

"Rescued" may be the only real ballad on the record, somewhat reminiscent of Something Corporate's "Miss America" (off the album North). It's about the latest in a series of break-ups with the same girl, becoming frustratingly routine yet still heartbreakingly painful.

Track 10, "MFEO", is a catchy symphony comprising two parts. The first part titled "Made for Each Other" is rather up-tempo, while the song slows down a bit for the second half "You Can Breathe". The last chorus repeatedly picks up the line "Where are you now?" with the same intonation as earlier on in the song "The Mixed Tape", which in a way bookends the album.

The bonus track "Into the Airwaves" deals with a long-distance relationship, that is bridged by McMahon "slipping into the airwaves". Eventually, the person McMahon wrote this song about moved back to California before he even got the chance to record it.

• Robert "Raw" Anderson – guitar, backup vocals
• Brian Coffman – guitar
• CJ Eiriksson – programming, drums
• Tommy Lee – drums
• Andrew McMahon – piano, vocals, organ, bells, harmonica, keyboards, hand percussion, Wurlitzer
• Jay McMillan – drums
• Patrick Warren – chamberlin, moog, melodica, samples, accordion, string and horn samples, organ
• Terry Wilson – sitar
• Jim Wirt – guitar, bass, backup vocals

1. ^ Talking with Andrew McMahon. PunkPressOnline. Retrieved on September 21, 2005.
2. ^ 40 Minutes with Andrew McMahon. Mammoth Press. Retrieved on June 28, 2006.