Richey Edwards’ unique writing style and subject matter, not to mention the more infamous (and sadly, greater celebrated in some quarters) aspects of his persona both dictated the direction of and, following his disappearance, hung spectre-like over the Manic Street Preachers.
Though the band went on to achieve greater success without him (and produce some career defining work), it is hard to argue that the group’s best work wasn’t under the tutelage of Edwards.
This record finds them capitalising on the corner undoubtedly turned with the release of 2007’s Send Away the Tigers; the album which both catapulted them hurtling back to the mass market and, interestingly, seemed to act as justification for the decision to work on Journal. Whilst the more extreme cynics amongst us will view Journal as a product of exploitation and careerism up there with the publication of Cobain’s diaries, all concerns that returning to Edwards’ lyrics was ill-advised are simply blown away by the opening track ‘Peeled Apples’. The band seems to have pulled off the impossible, with every decision (even the choice of In Utero producer Steve Albini) vindicated by the results.
The album veers from the vicious to the understated whilst illustrating both the power and timelessness of Edwards as a lyricist, and the skill and hunger of a band that seemingly, in facing their past, have significantly rendered any doubts of their future fading into mediocrity redundant.
(Luke Baylis)
