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Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers
| Allmusic |
| Richey James Edwards disappeared in February 1995, just months after the release of the Manic Street Preachers' lacerating third album, The Holy Bible. He was officially presumed dead in November 2008 and just months later the Manics released Journal for Plague Lovers, an album that's an explicit sequel to The Holy Bible right down to its Jenny Saville cover art. The Manics pay tribute to their lost comrade by setting his last writings to music, getting Steve Albini -- beloved by Richey for his production on Nirvana's In Utero, a clear antecedent and close relation to The Holy Bible -- to produce a record unlike any they've made since his vanishing. Tripping on barbed-wire guitars and twitchy as a raw nerve even when it's draped in strings, Journal for Plague Lovers consciously harks back to the emotional bloodletting of Bible, only this manages to skirt the darkest corners of the soul, never quite feeling as desperately hopeless or unsettling as that bleakest of albums. Curiously, there's a feeling of comfort, even relief, to Journal for Plague Lovers, a palpable sense that the bandmembers are grateful to be confronting Richey's ghost head-on. Of course, the Manics never ignored Edwards, but he was notable as an absence -- not presence -- in their music: when he left, they chose to leave behind their arty punk for dignified arena rock. Here, they ditch that inflated sound -- although, truth be told, they were making inroads in this direction on 2007's Send Away the Tigers -- for tight, clanking, cantankerous guitars, so they're not only singing Edwards' words but playing his music, bringing him back into the band in a way that makes them full. Now that they've completed the songs he left behind, it's not that the Manics can finally put Richey to rest now, but rather that they've found peace, that they're finally ready to acknowledge and embrace the blackest portion of their past, and that the grieving has finally stopped and they're moving forward. Indeed, Journal for Plague Lovers winds up being The Holy Bible in reverse: every moment of despair is a reason to keep on living instead of an excuse to pack it all in....full text |
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| Guardian |
| This is the Manics' catharsis album: its lyrics were written by Richey Edwards, who gave them to his bandmates just before his disappearance, and are heard here for the first time. It's taken the band 14 years to put music to what turned out to be his last words, and you can see why - composing songs around Edwards's often-impenetrable thoughts must have been one of their toughest challenges. The result does them, and him, proud. Forgoing the arena-rock of recent years for something close to the barbed punk of their Holy Bible era - though less disjointed this time, and studded with hooks you could hang a feather boa from - they've made a complex but very listenable record. The focus isn't on Edwards's mental state, though there's ample evidence of it ("I'd like to go to sleep and wake up happy"), but on making a passionate rock album that honours the past yet is very much of the present. Caroline Sullivan...full text |
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| Uncut |
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With all the lyrics culled from Richey Edwards’ notebooks and a cover painting by Jenny Saville, the Manics appear to be touting Journal For Plague Lovers as a follow-up to their tormented masterpiece, 1994’s The Holy Bible. It’s a risky tactic – imagine if New Order announced they’d uncovered a new stash of Ian Curtis’ lyrics and were planning to record Unknown Pleasures 2. Yet the Manics must have agonised for years about using Richey’s lost verses: pointed but poetic, crackling with intelligence, bleak but often also very funny, they’re far superior to anything Nicky Wire has come up with since This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. Only now, with Edwards officially declared presumed dead in November, have the band felt comfortable about setting them to music. If there’s any lingering unease about this endeavour, it’s instantly dispelled by the first few ferocious chords. Richey would surely be proud of the way his words have galvanised the remaining Manics into making some of their most vital music for years. Just like old times, “Peeled Apples” is heralded by a sampled voice (from The Machinist, the film for which Christian Bale lost 62lbs). Then comes an oil-boring bass rumble, a searing post-punk guitar line and a slew of unmistakable Richey aphorisms: “The figure eight inside out is infinity”; “The Levi Jean has always been stronger than the Uzi”; “Falcons attack the pigeons in the West Wing at night”....full text |
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