and so on to only the second day of release for the year that is 2018, look you see. here, as we ebb towards the end of the fourth month of this year. i guess we are not going to have a vintage year for music releases.
in fairness, there were some other releases i have an interest in this year - the new Jack White, the "new" Jimi Hendrix and the new David Byrne. partly i have not gone and got them for my time to listen to vibes is presently limited, but mostly i am being tight or "budget wise" and am thus happy to collect all three as and when they fall into the HMV "2 for £15" category, rather than spend £10 each on them. although, to do that, i would have to find a fourth, and spend £30 on 3 CDs i want + 1 to fill up the order, as opposed to £30 on the CDs i want. oh.
that will be then, this is now. and there are some bands, or if you will musical acts, that i will purchase any and all releases by purely on autopilot. one such concern of the vibes would be the Manic Street Preachers. with a new album out by them, then, a day of release was to be had. both actual, and the day after. kind of. sort of. look, you will see.
yes, that is the new album off of arguably Wales' most successful band ever. no, that is not a CD or LP or even one of them "download" things. that right there is the tape, what they made available off of internet, and what i ordered. so i am having that as counting as me doing a day of release on the actual day of release, for it arrived in the post on the day of release, Friday 13 April. the double edition, "deluxe" CD i went off on the Saturday after, or if you like the 14th April, to purchase.
huh? buying the tape and CD, of an album which one could hear "free" via legal and less than legal means anyhow. yes. quite normal and tres nostalgic. back in the 80s it was not uncommon for me, and many others, to purchase both the tape, the lp and the cd of some new releases. this was despite their being no real discernible difference in the content of each. we, i, did it "just because". a move that caught the record labels at the time rather off guard, for they did not think that people would buy the same album on different formats. yes, i know i have not said much on the album. anyway, that's another classic case of the record industry simply not understanding their market or audience.
so, then, off to HMV. as this was an exciting new release by an established band, i had wild expectations, hopes and ambitions that HMV would celebrate this in the window, with either massive posters celebrating a new album off of the band after or 4 years (2014, i think Futurology came out?), or at the very least, surely a mention of it in passing
no. gone are the days of "Know HMV - Know Music". as you can see, and in fairness they were probably paid a bit to have this done, just about the whole window display of HMV - both windows - gets dominated by the VHS, Beta and Laserdisc release of Star Wars Episode VIII : Battlestar Galactica. this wouldn't, i suggest, be all that bad if it was in celebration of a decent Star Wars film, rather than this, one of the weakest and poorest ever to be made.
so, the album. my experience of it before getting it were just two of the apparently three "singles" released or if you insist "dropped". International Blue was splendid enough, and Distant Colours or whatever it is called (that, just looked at the tape box) grew on me. not sure what the 2nd single betwixt those two was, and no i am not going to look it up.
due to an administrative error, however, i had received some opinions and reviews. my understanding is that, in a moment of madness or other such general brain melt, Amazon issued the complimentary mp3s of the record to all who had "pre-ordered" the record quite some time before they were meant to. and i really hate the term "pre-ordered". when you have ordered something that is it, irrelevant of the release date or when you get it. "pre-order" is all that vast ocean of time when you haven't ordered whatever it is.
the reviews were not at all good. poor, "lost it", waste of time, says nothing, load of rubbish, etc were the most common descriptions. whereas i paid attention to this, i did not allow it to cloud my mind. whilst there are many thing what i have in common with fellow Manics fans that i consider chums, there are also numbers of differences. as i had not minded the two songs i had heard, i suspected that perhaps my reaction to the album would be different.
it pretty much was. whereas there's nothing "wow" outstanding on it, this is a solid, decent enough record. one of the few measures i can give you, and i appreciate this is perhaps relevant to those only who know me away from all this blog thing, is that the first time i played it at no point did i even think or consider of stopping it to go off for a cigarette. by the 2nd and progressive plays, it was only by the last track, 12, The Left Behind, where the band took the decision to let Nicky Wire "sing", that i felt it appropriate to have a cigarette, some distance away from the stereo.
now, then, the next picture is a bit of public service, look you see. several people will have, like me, purchased the tape. unlike me they will have done so simply to sell it, perhaps via that ebay business, for a profit, to the collectors who somehow missed it on the website. as my purchase was purely to own it, open it and play it, here's a picture of what the inside artwork looks like.
right now, as i type this, i have the Nicky Wire song on i mentioned earlier. if God loves a trier, truly, as cockneys are so prone to saying, then the presumably limitless capacity of the heart of God is brimming with love and other such emotions in respect of Nicky Wire and his singing endeavours.
thankfully, Nicky Wire's contribution to the album as a whole is rather more the composition of lyrics rather than the singing of them. voicing the words is left, wisely, to the beautiful sounds of the vocals of James Dean Bradfield. whereas he seems to perpetually promote an idea that his voice is going and he won't be able to do all of this for much longer - the idea of bringing in a new singer, leaving him to strum his guitar and bounce around on one foot to his and the fans delight - has been mooted. but, you know, for now he sounds as good here as one would expect.
perhaps one of the issues some of my fellow fans have had with this record is that it's unclear what they are saying. well, maybe that's the point of the title, Resistance Is Futile. we now live in a world where, dangerously so, society is apparently dictated to by whatever stupid thing is "trending" on "twitter" now. although something will trend for hours if not minutes, long lasting and far reaching decisions get taken. not helping this is, of course, a certain world leader of some power seemingly determined to govern and lead exclusively through the platform.
maybe the point of the record is not so much that they are exhausted, spent and tired by, of and attempting to rant and rave about things what upset them. instead, then, they are quite content to strum some splendid tunes, make a few observations and, well, that's it. less "manic street preachers", more "why don't we just sit down with a nice cup of tea and chat about this politely". one can understand how that would go some way towards alienating a devout and loyal fanbase.
should i recall right, other than Together Stronger, their splendid song for Wales and their oh so close to victory efforts at Euro 2016 (some sort of football thing), the last thing what the band has done is 20th century concerts and celebrations of Everything Must Go. if so, that shows. at times a lot of this album sounds very, very, tres, uber similar to both that and its successor, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. a cynic might say they've simply taken the more pop, commercially orientated melodies and riffs from those two records and added new words over them. more than once, for instance, i have found myself singing either Australia or Everything Must Go over International Blue.
any overt, classical Nicky Wire sixth form college wankery on the go? but of course. it would not be Nicky Wire if some of the lyrics were not written as he imagined himself still a 16 or 17 know it all A Level English Lit student, just knowing that the world was his to conquer with the words he composed. Vivian and Dylan & Catilin are where his sixth former wankery are most on display, but happily or sadly there are hints of it in all corners of the record.
surely there is some anger lurking on the record? hmn. depends on how you define anger. Sequels Of Forgotten Wars and Broken Algorithms lean towards being the angry, preaching ways one would most normally associate with the band. but, even then, there seems to be more a sense of resignation that nothing will ever change, rather than a rallying cry in the hopes of diverting the course of the world.
mindful of the above, we get a sequel of sorts on the record. Liverpool Revisited is unmistakably and unavoidably a follow up to the devastating conclusion of This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, the subtle yet scathing SYMM, about Hillsborough. where the original song sought to bring justice about for the 96, this song is from a time when that justice is closer to - thankfully - being. but the song knows that "justice" will not bring back the 96, nor was away the horrific scars of the evil cover up by the police and government about why people had to die for simply wanting to watch a football match.
a not entirely unexpected tribute to David Bowie comes along in the form of In Eternity. to be honest, it in itself makes this whole album worthwhile again. whilst dangerously dabbling with sixth former wankery ("will we ever see the likes of you again"), mostly it's a subtle reference to him, and beautiful too. musically it would appear to "borrow" from moments perhaps the more fellow devout fans would get. the start and middle, for instance, sound "a bit" like the beautiful instrumentation of V2 Schnieder off of "heroes".
outside of In Eternity, well, there's no highlight or lowlight, really. at least not yet. perhaps over time, and i will be playing this again, things will stand out. mostly, though, this is a pleasant, wonderful record for us "over 40" audience of the Manics. the ones of their fanbase who first encountered them in our late teens or early 20s, and, well, have had them not too far from the soundtrack of life since then.
the most prolific and celebrated of Manics observers is of course the wonderful Franny, who from time to occasional time graces stages to perform his own music. he has, he says, noted a correlation between appreciation of Resistance Is Futile and factors such as age, being a parent and other old stuff. i am somewhere near twice his age; he hates the record and i quite like it. should you wish to, you are welcome to walk away from this blog post with that as a provisional guide as to whether or not you will like it.
what of value? is the "deluxe", 2 CD, fancy shaped set i bought worth the £16.99 HMV charged me, or if you like 1p south of £17? kind of. as has become standard for them, the 2nd CD is dominated by "demo versions" of the whole album. in most instances the "demo" versions sound exceptionally well polished, and not at all different from the album proper. have the demo disc on now, other than Distant Colours it all sounds a lot like the "last but one" version of the songs rather than the first recordings. the two extra tracks on the end of CD 2 features one done by Nicky Wire on vocals and one that is quite good.
from here to where for the band? no idea. one really gets a sense that the band members will be in the Manic Street Preachers for life, for none of them would have any idea really what to do if not all of this. a bit like U2, i suppose. in recent interviews James Dean Bradfield has spoken in a not positive way of his understanding of how some people "want a definitive end to things", but he has no interest. quite right; may it all continue for a while.
so, yes, then, the Manic Street Preachers do still appear to have stuff of interest to say, just not in as confrontational manner as normal. if my view is of any value, then absolutely worth 45 minutes of your time giving a listen too, maybe even worth doing so by paying £10 or so for the CD. or £7 for the tape off of the website, if they have copies left.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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