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With machine-tooled festival sets and an increasing willingness to embrace aspects of their past that fans love but they find more problematic, Manic Street Preachers have settled into their latter phase with an assured confidence. Fifteen years on from “one last shot at mass communication,” they know their time has passed and they now serve a devoted faithful. Postponed release dates and multi-format bundles betray the undimmed love of a chart-topper but, that aside, this is an album that looks inwards in more ways than one.
Where once a Wire vocal was tucked away in the middle of an album so it could do minimal harm, Nicky is the first voice on ‘Critical Thinking’, taking aim at modern buzzwords and clichéd phrases whose vacuous nature has riled the ageing antagonist. His playfully cantankerous delivery builds to an explosion around “Believe in yourself. Imposter syndrome. Fuck that!” The additional irony being that the title of the song – and album – is another such phrase that’s proved popular in certain corners of the internet. It’s hugely endearing and musically ugly, with a nod to Gang Of Four and PiL, and a sign that a degree of prior understanding is assumed.
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Wire summons a genuinely lovely lead performance on ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’, wallowing in regret and grief at the loss of the younger self. As with so many of these songs, the music is knowingly ‘big’ and sweeps along with a chiming solo from James Dean Bradfield and a glittering instrumental passage after the middle-eight that is one of the prettiest things they’ve ever recorded. Using beauty to channel sadness and anger is a theme that sustains across the album, including ‘Decline And Fall’, ‘Out Of Time Revival’ and ‘People Ruin Paintings’.
‘Dear Stephen’ finds Wire reflecting on an old postcard from Morrissey after he’d missed a Smiths gig through illness. While he feels tied to the man’s music forever, Nicky wishes he wasn’t so hard to like these days: “It’s so easy to hate, it takes guts to be kind. To paraphrase one of your heartbreak lines.” Bradfield’s gorgeous vocal is accompanied by affectionate guitar work that’s part-Smiths, part-Lloyd Cole. The frontman’s voice is even more stirring on ‘My Brave Friend’, an old lyric that Wire clambered his way back to while examining his sorrow, which is full of love and remembrance.
It’s not Manics-by-numbers, despite being packed with so many enduring aspects from across their career. Freed from expectation, they can gleefully channel the melodic sheen of the Eighties without veering into needy bombast. There seems to be some tension at the heart of the band’s dynamic right now, but it has inspired a meticulous, strident and euphoric sounding record.
8/10
Words: Gareth James
Dig It? Dig Deeper: Echo & The Bunnymen, Gang Of Four, The Cure
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