Futurology -
Someday we will return / No matter how much it hurts / And it hurts
Walk Me to the Bridge -
Old songs leave long shadows
Immediate, poppy and a fairly obvious choice of lead single. A metronomic, faintly unsettling guitar riff explodes into sunlight and synths and I find myself smiling in spite of myself. Surprisingly, given that the song pretty much fires all its ideas at you within the first minute, I remain fond of this, with its catchy simplicity somehow trumping all other critical concerns. Call it the Undertones factor, with the corollary that, much as I like it, 'Walk Me to the Bridge' isn't one tenth as good as 'Teenage Kicks'. The lyrical references to a fatal friend with a blinding intellect, naturally lead the listener to assume it's about Richey Edwards, the band's former lyricist and guitarist, who it's believed may have thrown himself off the Severn bridge in 1995. Nicky Wire's gone on record as saying this isn't true and that the lyric is a reference to the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden and is about bridges as places of transition and liminality. Fair enough, Wire actually wrote the damn thing and that's a perfectly valid reading, though I remain unconvinced that it isn't, at least in part, about the skinny guy with the great cheekbones.
Let's go to War -
To feel some pureness and pain / We need to go to war again
A call to arms to a generation slumped in narcissistic apathy. Or something. I've heard people describe this as an album highlight. Maybe those people are right, but I, frankly, don't get it. It's built around a riff that sounds a bit like Edvar Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' (or the Alton Towers music, if you prefer) It stomps along convincingly for the duration of its run time and the call and response chorus is fun in a slightly naff way. It's just they covered this territory before and better, most recently with '30 Years War' from last years Rewind the Film. But whereas that was an amazing mash up of Blade Runner and a colliery brass band, powered by two generations of conscienceless Thatcherism, this is a reasonably enjoyable Muse filler track
The Next Jet to Leave Moscow -
So you played Cuba/ Did you like it Brother? / Bet you felt proud / You silly little fucker
Ooh. That's much more like it. While 'Let's go to War' comes across like a cheesy rerun of Rewind the Film's closing track this feels like an effective counterpoint to that albums 'I Miss the Tokyo Skyline'. Both songs use layers of sounds to simulate the feeling of movement through an urban landscape. But whereas there the narrator found peace, melting into his alien surroundings, here he's confronted by his hypocrisies and pretensions, any claims of comradeship laughed off (not unreasonably) as the condescension of a millionaire rock star, forcing the narrator to keep on moving, forever restless and rootless. Musically it's fairly unremarkable on first listen, but it gradually works its way into your skull, with Cian Ciaran from Super Furry Animals adding some nice textures. More like this please.
Europa Geht Durch Mich -
Keep on moving to escape / Keep on running away from life
The albums key track, insomuch as it's lyrics appear throughout the album and it effectively embodies the key themes of Europhilia and release through movement. It's one of the more attention grabbing things here, the music driven along by a throbbing base line, underscored by whirs and clanks and screeches, like an autobahn ripping through the heart of some gigantic machine (if that's not too over the top, which I freely admit it is). Bradfield and the actress Nina Hoss prove an effective vocal partnership trading lines in English and German, his voice an impassioned bark, hers cold and authoritative. Expect it to soundtrack UKIP's next party conference
Divine Youth -
Divine youth is lying in / A battered and a bruised skin / I wear but don't recognise
Another duet (Sort of. Like 95% of Manic duets there's two singers, but only one voice) this time with the Welsh harpist Georgia Ruth Williams. A lullaby about the loss of youth and the fearlessness it brings, played out on harp and synth. I can see how someone could hear this and dismiss it as inconsequential or even, god forbid, twee, but I think it's lovely. It probably all depends how you feel about plinky plonky harps. The music doesn't so much play as unspool and to my ears Ms Williams has an unconventionally gorgeous voice.
Sex, Power, Love and Money -
We could have been heroes / But failure's more fun
Well, hello there, you odd little thing. Are you lost? You wouldn't be surprised to hear this on Generation Terrorists, the Manics first album. You are surprised to hear it here. A glam rock shout along about... well... sex, power, love and money. Guitars squeal, Bradfield yells 'Sex!' over and over in your ear and in the background Nicky Wire chants 'Obsession, possession / Confession, recession' like some second year art student engaged in a performance piece. It's so naff and so ludicrous and I am so very glad it exists, but in the context of the album its as distracting and embarrassing as an erection in a lycra jumpsuit.
Dreaming a City (Hughesovka) -
Imagine the greatest Sega Mega Drive game you've never played. You're rattling through an alien city on a hyper magnetised death train, mowing down wave after wave of baddies with your mono filament hedge trimmer and cosmic ass cannons. You crash through the final door and confronted by the end of level boss, the future's answer to Ian Duncan Smith. The fucker takes one look at you and immediately transforms into his combat form, a winged Tyrannosaur made entirely out of guns and tits. You then have to blast off the boss's own leg and beat him to death with it. 'Dreaming a City' is the soundtrack to that game and it is awesome.
Alternatively it's inspired by the the Ukrainian city of Hughesovka (now Donetsk) and the migrant workers from Merthyr Tydfil who helped build it. Whatever. It's an instrumental. It can be about whatever you want.
Black Square -
Paintings are never finished / But merely abandoned
Given that the Manics are somewhat wedded to the verse, chorus, verse chorus, middle eight, chorus, chorus song structure, it's perhaps strange that they've written a song inspired by something as structurally out there as abstract performance art. True to form despite the different instruments tweaked and processed to sound like they're from the future it's probably one of the more Manics-by-numbers things here, although there's a wee double time breakdown before the final chorus that's reasonably cool. It's a nice little song about the struggle for an unobtainable state of perfection in art and I neither hate nor love it.
Between the Clock and The Bed -
I'm well aware of happiness / And what it takes to get to it.
Misguided Missile -
Society never made / An effort with me / And I was willing to be deceived
Now there's a damn shame. I like this a lot. The verse's stuttering base line and eerie synths suddenly stretches out into a chorus that is wide as the sky and is the nearest the album gets to a lighters in the air moment and then there's a few seconds near the end where you're left with just James Dean Bradfield and an acoustic guitar and you're reminded just how good the man's voice is. But really? 'I am the sturm und drang / I am the schadenfreude'? That's just crap. It sounds less like you're claiming to embody the ideas and emotions of storm and stress and shameful joy and more like your randomly deploying two of the stock German phrases that a non speaker might reliably be expected to know. I'm also fairly sure that you're meant to pronounce the 'e' at the end schadenfreude. Plus 'I can fill your void' sounds like a sleazy pick up line for nihilists. Shame. Damn shame
The View from Stow Hill -
How did this town get so old
After travelling through Germany, Scandinavia, Russia and Ukraine, we now find ourselves back in Wales. A wistful, backwards looking acoustic number played out against a programmed drum beat. The songs got soul, but lacks any sense of purpose or drive. It's essentially a trundle round Newport in the pissing down rain, musing on things like the chartists, de-industrialisation and apolitical youth, but never really finding any sort of coherent through line. And then there's also another lyrical misfire with 'The misguided tweets / The sad facebooking'. That's two bollocks lines in a row, Wire. One more and your out.
Mayakovsky -
Well played, Wire. Another instrumental. Bullet dodged. Whereas 'Dreaming a City' felt like it was on rails this is far more free form. Bradfield does lots of widdly guitar things, Sean Moore bangs drums, computers go beepity, boppity boop and Wire shouts 'Mayakovsky'* randomly, like some sort of bell-end. It's the sound of future, albeit the future from the perspective of the late seventies/early eighties. It might have worked better as an opening track, setting the tone for the rest of the album. As it stands it's completely skippable
As has become standard, there's also a deluxe addition with a second disc of material out. Most of the disc is comprised of demo versions of the above. In the past these have been worth a look as they give an idea of alternate song structures, lyrics, vocal lines that the band opted not to pursue. Unfortunately this time all you're getting is less polished versions of the finished songs. There's also three additional bonus tracks. 'Blistered Fingers' is gothic Chas and Dave, worth listening to, but definitely B side quality. 'Empty Motorcade' is better. It fairly pelts along and sounds like a nervy remix of OMD's 'Enola Gay'. 'The Last Time I Saw Paris' adds la ville lumiere to the Manics grande toure. It's a woozy, skeezy waltz through the back streets of the French capital and it is sexy as fuck. Why it and 'Empty Motorcade' aren't on the regular release is a mystery.
The danger for any band of a certain vintage is that they begin to sound like a cabaret version of themselves. That was certainly the issue that a lot of Manics fans had with Send Away the Tigers and Postcards From a Young Man. Here though, despite the huge number of guest artists, the album feels utterly cohesive and self contained, with consistent lyrical and musical ideas running through it. It feels like a new direction (at least within the context of the band itself) rather than a rehash. Granted it doesn't exactly re-invent the wheel, too many songs are forgettable and there's the requisite handful of lyrical clangers. The overall consistency and occasional flourishes of excellence are not going to win over many of the unconverted. But that's for younger bands to care about. 25 years and 12 albums deep into their career it's enough that the Blackwood boys are feeling comfortable in their skin and that they have a future.
8/10
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Don't know if I'll be posting next Sunday as I'll be participating in the Sunderland Color Run. I'll try and update some time in the next week though, as God only knows that planes will drop from the sky and lava will spew from the earth if some random dickhead from the north east of England doesn't update his blog.
You can still sponsor wor lass here. All sponsorship money goes to helping women and children fleeing domestic violence.
*Vladimir Mayakovsky was a poet/playwright/break dancer associated with the Russian Futurist movement. Naturally, I already knew that and did not have to google him.
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