Continuous evolution pleases Manchester Orchestra singer

Digging through early works can be painful for artists of every stripe. It’s like flipping through middleschool yearbooks and cringing at the crooked glasses and shiny braces.

Not so for Andy Hull, an artistic anomaly.

The lead singer in Manchester Orchestra feels equally happy with each album in his discography.

“I think they’re really fun to listen to. They’re snapshots,” he said. “Some are tough to listen to, not because I don’t like the music, but (on) our second record I can hear pain in my voice. I can hear angst and anger, which is fascinating because the songs really hold up and I’m proud of our records.”

That album, “Mean Everything to Nothing,” lays on the existential angst of early adulthood — emotional, self-absorbed and seemingly endless — and makes Hull sound ancient beyond his 23 years at the time.

The once-punk, now indie-rock-leaning, band from Atlanta will co-headline (with the Front Bottoms) a Sunday show at Express Live.

On the group’s latest Who: CD 102.5 Holiday Show Side B featuring Manchester Orchestra Where: Express Live, 405 Neil Ave. Contact: 614-461-5483, www.promowestlive.com Doors open: 6 p.m. Sunday Tickets: $35, or $40 day of show

record — “A Black Mile to the Surface,” released in 2017 — the singer softens his voice and his message, focusing on family life both real and fictional.

At Hull’s age (he’s now 32), the stylistic shift is due in part to natural maturity and in part to a film score — the soundtrack to a story about a flatulent dead man.

Several friends who worked on a Manchester Orchestra music video contacted Hull several years ago about composing the score for 2016 oddball buddy comedy “Swiss Army Man.”

Hull and Robert McDowell — Manchester Orchestra’s guitarist and Hull’s brotherin-law — composed and tweaked for a year, writing half of the score before the script was finished and half after filming was completed.

The duo couldn’t use any instruments, only human voices and ambient sounds (ripping paper, clapping, zippers) to recreate noises in the woods.

Focusing intensely on fewer aspects of his craft — in the case of “Swiss Army Man,” his own vocal cords — ushered Hull and his bandmates into virgin territory on their fifth full-length album.

“The space in between things was a big part of it,” Hull said. “With the movie, we had to make moments that were 10 to 15 seconds of beautiful music. We loved the challenge to add that trick to the record.”

In songs such as “The Grocery,” one of the most guitar-heavy pieces on the new album, Hull pauses between choruses as if on hold with the cable company. He enunciates every line as if he’s reading aloud to his two small children.

The quietude is a first for the band, which made its mark with self-flagellating punk music.

“My goal now is to make songs that keep moving, but doing that without loudness felt like a really great challenge,” he said.

His musical arrangements might have deviated, but Hull doesn’t see much thematic difference in his songwriting.

Sure, he now writes more about fatherhood than fretting about an unknown future, but pondering existential questions has always been Hull’s method.

“Because I was always writing about life and God and death (and) those never expired for me, I can sing those songs and still be connected,” he said. “It’s not about some ex-girlfriend who broke my heart and I haven’t thought about in 15 years.”

On “The Maze,” Hull ponders the mysteries of caring for his daughter, Mayzie, now 4.

“Somebody said it’s unspeakable love / Well, you don’t believe I can speak well at all / You’re a maze to me,” he sings.

On the day his son, River, was born earlier this year, Hull sang him a song he’d written the previous evening.

“Musically, it’s a wealth of emotion and feelings that can be salvaged to write records and songs,” Hull said of parenting.

He still worries occasionally about his ideas drying up, but each new life stage has brought a new reserve of creative topics.

“Life continues to shift and change and challenge,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve said everything I want to say in the best way yet.”