Manic Street Preachers - 'Postcards From a Young Man'
I was personally quite interested in the release of Postcards as the Manic Street Preachers have become a favorite band of mine, very slowly and over several years, finally reaching new heights after writing a pre-release review of last year's Journal For Plague Lovers, an album which utilized the last remaining lyrics of former member Richey Edwards. It's telling that on my much-anticipated trip to London and Edinburgh in spring 2010, 80% of the items I picked up had to do with this 'new' fascination of mine, and in the year before the only concert I'd gone to was catching the Manics on their first US tour in ten years. I had been hooked into the Manics like I had been with the Libertines in my early teenage years, as I had been with the Who at the onset of adulthood; utterly besotted with their music for the most part and yet simultaneously intensely critical and looking for tears in the golden tapestry. There were imperfections to be had in the Manics' music and in their characters, they were and are human after all, and their music does not lack in addressing humanity (a cursory skim of some of their lyrical subject matter through the years: anorexia - “4st 7lb”, the Spanish civil war - “If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will be Next”, gender questioning - “Born a Girl”). As for the imperfections...Gold Against the Soul and Send Away the Tigers are not my cup of tea. While Gold Against the Soul is not infrequently regarded as half-decent, half-overblown rockist cliché, Send Away the Tigers induces more divisive responses from fans – the largely lighhearted, poppy feel throughout does not sit well with some, while providing a breath of fresh air out of the Manics' sometimes heavily dark catalog for others.
As wary as I was of Send Away the Tigers, the very opening of Postcards From a Young Man grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, sonically telling me that the proceedings to follow were to be a largely cheerful affair, or at least dressed to be uplifting no matter what the subject matter. Perhaps this is only a natural response after the purging of Edwards' remaining lyrical contribution to the band in Journal for Plague Lovers, and the Manics have made no secret about revisiting their own past here, with the album being touted as a sort of return to Everything Must Go aesthetics. Postcards begins with “It's Not War (Just the End of Love)”, also the first single off the album with accompanying music video featuring Michael Sheen and Anna Friel (seen below article), is anthemic to the point of borderline reversion to classic rock stylings, almost a guilty pleasure: just you try to get that chorus out of your head. “Postcards From a Young Man” is equally spirited as the first, echoing in some ways the title track to Send Away the Tigers, though does a neater job at setting the stage for the album – swapping it with “It's Not War (Just the End of Love)” would've made more sense thematically.
“Some Kind of Nothingness”, featuring Ian McCulloch, must've been surreal to record – after all, Echo and the Bunnymen were the first band that three-fourths of the young Manics, James, Sean and Richey, saw at a concert in the 1980s. Instrumentally, it is not so displaced from a latter-day Bunnymen track – matching in some ways the vibe of their self-titled 1987 release – although James Dean Bradfield's vocals crossing with McCulloch's and a gospel choir's is a bit much to contend with at once. “The Descent (Pages 1 & 2)” seems to be a descent in mood as well: autumnal strings, “I hope I'm making sense / I've lost my last defense” and introspective “Do I have the courage of the books I've read?”. “Hazelton Avenue” is a personal favorite of the Postcards bunch, starting off like a 60s girl-group single (complete with rolling drums and a psych-tinged guitar effect creeping in), brilliant strings throughout, high-spirited; lacking a specific ideological agenda, this is a carefree song that perhaps only the 2010 Manics could have made.
One of the most complex tunes on Postcards, “Auto Intoxication”, featuring John Cale on piano, picks up on the personal themes addressed in “The Descent”; “The more I want to be me / The less I know myself”. It changes tempo and feel several times throughout, first plodding along, then spinning out into the atmosphere before insistent guitars pull the listener back in. “Golden Platitudes” sees the return of the choirs, nostalgic (“Where did the feeling go? / Where did it all go wrong?”) and one of the most optimistic Manics tracks in the whole canon (“I fell back in love with love / I know that sounds odd”). “I Think I've Found It” matches lyrical formulas put forth in “The Descent” and “Auto Intoxication” but with less musical variation, a bit of a tired track compared with the others that surround it.
“A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun”, featuring Guns N' Roses' Duff McKagan on bass, starts with a rebellious riff, a drum beat like a sigh of breath (or is that the pump of a heart?), making for suspenseful listening. “All We Make is Entertainment” seems to be a brother to “It's Not Love (Just the End of War”)” in sound, apart from the quainter music box-esque ping decorating this track, and the theme of which Bradfield has said: “I wanted the music to have the slight feel of a super-slick, hopeless game show. Like a great, happy empty-headed behemoth. We played a festival in Bergen and everywhere there was stuff that had been made in Bergen. We make nothing. All we make is entertainment, and we can’t even do that anymore." “The Future Has Been Here 4Ever” is easily the best Nicky Wire has sounded vocally on any Manics album yet. Wire has been a frequent target for ridicule over his occasional singing, which he himself has described as more a “sigh, on Manics albums, b-sides, and his one solo album in 2006, I Killed the Zeitgeist. “Make yourself pretty / Just for one last time” he calls, amidst otherwise drummer Sean Moore's trumpet blasts. The sound here is hopeful, a feeling mentioned by name as the choir joins in with Wire: “When you can't shake off your yesterdays / When you can't rewrite your histories / When you let some love break through the night / When you let some hope come into your life” The closer, “Don't Be Evil” – also a Google corporate motto – is full of the most venom on Postcards, the sharpness of the instrumentation fitting along with cutting criticism. "It’s hard to write about this stuff without sounding like a boring old man...But you have to cast a critical eye on things be it technology or your own class. I don’t want citizen journalism or blogs; I want to read people who know what they’re talking about.", said Wire.
I was pleasantly surprised with Postcards From a Young Man. Despite my relative admiration for the Manic Street Preachers' works, I practically had my hands wrung in fear of Postcards being a huge disappointment, a grab at an alien, commercial sound that would somehow be untrue to the band. I was happy to hear that, while not being disingenuous to themselves, they have managed to inject a strongly positive feeling into their work, without resorting to cheesy stadium rock (Send Away the Tigers, I'm looking at you). The choirs and vocal layering are at times overdone, a couple of songs only half-realized (“I Think I've Found It” and “All We Make is Entertainment” come to mind), but overall the album provides an invigorating listening experience, and proof that the Manics still are covering new ground with each release. They have yet to make a part 2 of a previous album, and as Journal For Plague Lovers was no Holy Bible Part II, nor is Postcards From a Young Man an Everything Must Go Part II. The comparison ends after the band has emerged in both cases from under a dark, heavy collection of lyrics and emotions, blossoming forth as a renewed flower, shedding its petals here for the 10th time.
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