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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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| Cokemachineglow |
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If my Google search is to be believed, the Virginia State Epileptic Colony, aka Lynchburg Hospital, was an early 20th Century dumping site for the state’s poorest residents and those deemed socially inadequate—a haven for the “feebleminded” if you will. Also: ground zero for a state-sponsored program of eugenic sterilization with colony officials weeding out those they believed would tarnish racial purity. It’s a little-discussed black mark on American History with frightening parallels to Nazi Germany. In other words: best inspiration for Richey Edwards lyrics EVER. Ask any self-respecting Jeff Buckley fan why the posthumous release thing seldom works, or go listen to Born Again (1999). Or try a “new” anthology of Bukowski poems, one that seems to surface every two years like clockwork, always paling in comparison to the stuff that Hank published when he was alive. So when it was reported that the next Manic Street Preachers record would contain lyrics derived entirely from a wealth of recently unearthed Richey Edwards prose, the default reaction was probably an eye-roll coupled with Weekend at Bernie’s jokes. Anyone with a passing interest in the past decade’s Brit-rock knows that Edwards was the fourth member of the Manic Street Preachers and the mastermind behind the brutally bleak lyrics comprising the Manics’ endlessly lauded The Holy Bible (1994). He even cemented his place in beautiful loser history by completely vanishing from the face of the earth in February of 1995—and this was after he baited, or subsequently forced, the NME’s Steve Lamacq into watching him carve the oft-quoted “4 REAL” into his left arm. He’s only recently been declared officially dead. Homeboy truly earned the title of “The British Kurt Cobain.”...full text |
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| Drownedinsound |
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For an outfit not long off their 25th year, Manic Street Preachers have always tried their hardest - some might say too hard - to confound preconceived expectations. Musically ambiguous, lyrically articulate and aesthetically disconcerting, their earliest recordings barged unapologetically into the early Nineties in loud and obnoxious fashion; not to mention the preposterous boasts about selling a million copies of their debut record then splitting, or the venomous verbal assaults on rival artists that made them to pariahs of the UK independent rock scene for a short while. However, they always had the lyricism of Richard James Edwards to fire back at critics and, ultimately, set them apart from their peers. Even when it looked as though their early momentum had been squandered, the Manics hit back with The Holy Bible, a career-defining opus that many pundits still argue has rarely been bettered anywhere since. With its troubling subject matter and queasy musical accompaniments, The Holy Bible stands as an epitaph to its chief architect, Edwards famously disappearing shortly after the album's release. Since then, of course, the three-piece Manics have enjoyed something of a turbulent ride that saw monetary success (Everything Must Go, This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours) mixed with critical batterings (Know Your Enemy, Lifeblood) that would have probably made lesser bands quit whilst still vaguely ahead. Nevertheless, last year, Nicky Wire announced that his band's next record would consist entirely of lyrical observations left behind by Edwards and that the band had got Steve Albini on board to produce the album; Journal For Plague Lovers was conceived....full text |
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