September 27th, 2013: It’s Friday night and this writer is passing one of those casual conversations only smoker-strangers can have outside a Manic Street Preachers gig at The Ritz in Manchester.
The temporary soul mate is an impossibly skinny, slightly effeminate boy who, when he takes a bang from his dangling ciggie, sucks the poisonous gasses all the way down to his toes; I try to remember, meanwhile, how long it’s been since by contrast only a rotation of mortgages, school runs and tax bills were things to worry about instead.
Between drags he croaks, “My girlfriend has seen them more than 100 times live now.” Then, leaning conspiratorially in a little for effect, he delivers the kiss off: “But I don’t reckon much to that new album.”
Such is the dichotomy of being the Manic Street Preachers. Damned if they change, criticised for being introverted if they stay the same. ‘Rewind The Film‘ was a brave record to make by any standards; a downbeat coming of age group of songs with its pastoral echoes of a 20th century Britain for which we’ve become increasingly nostalgic, it’s manifesto a rejection of the triumph of technology’s knowledge at the expense of our decaying humanity. Outsiders – and there are few these days – carelessly misread its warmth for cynicism. The welsh trio’s response to being damned by faint praise? Why, release another album nine months later, that’s what.
The view from the front regarding ‘Futurology‘ was that it would be indebted to krautrock in terms of form, but any suggestion that it stands as some evil Teutonic doppelgänger to ‘Rewind The Film’ is rubbished with a single listen. The immediate conclusion instead is that the Manics haven’t been as overtly mainstream since 2007’s ‘Send Away The Tigers‘.
The titular opener is ample proof that the band’s conform to deform ethos remains as firmly entrenched as ever; James Dean Bradfield‘s vocal rough edges given a multi-tracked buffing, his guitar histrionics reigned in whilst Messrs. Wire and Moore are there for mostly moral support. If that’s the sound of a band proving that they have nothing left to prove, ‘Between The Clock & The Bed‘ – featuring a guest appearance by Scritti Politti main man and fellow maverick Green Gartside – is a model of restraint and weariness, a cocktail of programming and grown up (Elbow-esque?) rock flourishes that accompany ego shredding lyrics about a, ‘Man of little consequence’.
Recorded at Berlin’s Hansa studios in which David Bowie recorded ‘Heroes‘ through the haze, travel has it seems as ever broadened the mind. On ‘Let’s Go To War‘ the pulse of the band at its most anthemic is tempered by some eastern European melodies, whilst there will surely be no better line sung in any song released this year than, ‘Working class skeletons/Lie scattered in museums’. The influence of their surroundings is most overt on ‘Europa Geht Durch Mich‘, on jumble of chants backed with a churning, mechanical throb, actress Nina Hoss adding a handful of words that, even with limited German, make the whole thing sound like a tribute to the beauty of Continental enlightenment and stylish conformity.
Not everything is as streamlined. There are vividly contrasting moods on display, with Bradfield switching from the self-pummelling enervation of ‘Misguided Missile‘ at a stroke to the angry-but-alive throwback ‘Sex, Power, Love & Money‘. The latter is a musical conundrum, its chippy Britpop ennui coming from nowhere, a remarkable song given the band’s rejection of all things Camden at the time via the feral slabs of ‘The Holy Bible‘. Maybe to turn full circle is today’s moving forward in a straight line: either way there’s still time for ‘Dreaming a City‘, a sixties noire soundtrack that finally allows JDB to remind the listener of his extensive riffage pips, while closer ‘Mayakovsky‘ is likewise words free but sadly strays a little to close to the sun of jamming for anyone’s good.
Never less than alive to what should be done, the Manic Street Preachers are now in their middle age focusing on what little revolutions can be done. Acutely aware of their respective limitations as both artists and seemingly as people, it would be easy to limply process ‘Futurology’s rhetoric and see a band just playing chalk to their last release’s cheese. The reality is more complex; for all the accusations of po-faced aloofness, anyone who hears this record will immediately understand that these songs want to be heard by as many people as possible, mass communication massed on the borders of our conscience.
And the acid test? Well, our skinny friend will probably love it too.
