Send "Manic Street Preachers " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Manic Street Preachers are an infuriating band to love, particularly for Americans. Hewing a sound more closely related to US guitar rock of the ‘80’s while their British peers used a Kinks blueprint to charm the masses, the band only touched a scattershot few. When the Manics—as us fans so endearingly call them—switched over to a heavier version of post-punk, the indie minded replied with, “wait a decade and then this sound will be in.” When the band finally realized that stateliness inflected with the perfect dosage of optimism was what the British were looking for, Americans yet again turned an indifferent eye. Even more frustrating, and all inclusive, is Manic Street Preachers’ proclivity for following up more challenging and subversive offerings with efforts so watered down that the quality moments are left gasping for air. By following 2009’s marvelous Journal for Plague Lovers with latest release Postcards from a Young Man, this is not exactly the case, yet the two albums do illustrate a band being superb versus being merely good, respectively. Postcards from a Young Man, the Manics have stated, is a commercially motivated album. Fans like me who look to the band for their erudition (you can’t wade through an archive of press clippings without tripping over a dozen or so quotes from bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire about his politics degree) should remember this when giving the album its cursory listen. Rather than craft songs similar in sound to the big world-renowned guitar bands of now, the Manics have opted to tinker with the late ‘90’s sound that gained them fame following the disappearance of provocative lyricist and lead despairer Richey Edwards. In a move that both sells records and ties in with the album’s theme of reflecting upon one’s youth, the Manics have called upon such idols as Ian McCulloch of Echo & the Bunnymen, Duff McKagan of Guns ‘N’ Roses, and fellow Welsh rocker John Cale for assistance. All these elements don’t exactly take the shape of the musical dreams of today’s teens and young adults—especially in America—but Manic Street Preachers always have been an anachronistic bunch....full text |
| Bbc |
| So it's time to take a first listen to the new Manic Street Preachers album Postcards From A Young Man - their 10th studio set. It's been widely reported that James Dean Bradfield has declared it to be their "last attempt at mass communication". I take this to mean that like on their 2007 return to form Send Away The Tigers, they'll be going overtly for a radio presence to ease their way back into the nation's brains. The Manics have always been dab hands at constructing radio-friendly singles; the songwriting duo of Bradfield and Sean Moore creating epic hooks, tethering the lyrics of Richey Edwards or Nicky Wire. At their very best, they've subverted the charts, with socially- and politically-charged missives allied to the very poppest of pop melodies. So let's see what's what here then. (It's Not War) Just The End Of Love As previously discussed on this blog, this single has a great hook, a graceful power and a superb video featuring Michael Sheen and Anna Friel. It's superb and no doubt you've heard it already. It's out today (Monday 13 September). Postcards From A Young Man The title track has an upbeat, uplifting ambience that's again laden with strings. Bradfield pushes his voice, providing a growly counterpoint to the sweeping grandeur of the chorus. It benefits from a second - and third - listen to get that melody to work its way into my head. "I will not give up and I will not give in" shouts Bradfield - and that fire in his voice is good to hear. A small gripe would be the strange multi-layed choral ending with Bradfield joined by a gospel choir. To me, gospel choirs belong in gospel churches or on 1980s Genesis live tours....full text |
| Guardian |
| Let us for a moment return to 1992, the year the Manic Street Preachers released their debut album, Generation Terrorists. Let us imagine the general hilarity you could have caused by suggesting that 18 years later, they would be a beloved British rock institution, defiantly snarling, "I will not give up and I will not give in" on the title track of their eagerly awaited 10th album. It wasn't just that certain Preachers kept insisting they were going to split up after Generation Terrorists was released. Everything from the way their songs desperately crammed too many words into each line, to the gobby desire for immediate notoriety in an era when artists could still gradually work their way to the top, suggested a band who felt their time was already running out. Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 Manic Street Preachers Postcards From A Young Man Columbia 2010 It turned out to be the first in a series of moments when you might have confidently predicted the band's demise: after Richey Edwards's disappearance in 1995; following the failure of 2004's Lifeblood; perhaps even after 2009's triumphant Journal for Plague Lovers, which in its return to Edwards's lyric book, carried with it the sense of a band having come full circle. And yet, here we are, 22 years after their first single, staring at Postcards from a Young Man, which handily comes complete with yet another intimation that the end is nigh: Wire has described it as "one last attempt at mass communication". Of course, longevity has no value in and of itself: think of the grim-faced we're-here-because-we're-here forced- march that was Oasis' latter-day career. It's to the Manic Street Preachers' eternal credit that they've never been less than interesting, possibly as a result of their constant struggle to square a desire for mass acceptance with an equally voracious urge to provoke. Ever since their fifth album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, in 1998, they've been locked into a cycle of albums that seem to alternately court then confuse a mainstream audience, although it's worth noting that this seems to have less to do with any kind of snobbish desire to prove themselves above the mainstream audience than with a steadfast – if occasionally doomed – refusal to underestimate them. The latter might be the defining characteristic of a band that scored one of Britpop's most indelible hits with a song about the collapse of British working-class identity since the end of the second world war (A Design for Life), and reached No 1 with a single that referenced Noam Chomsky, Albert Camus and William Gladstone (The Masses Against the Classes). Certainly, it's all over Postcards from a Young Man, an album that attempts to lunge for the daytime Radio 2 playlist while offering a lengthy critique of the decline in British manufacturing industry and a despairing comparison of Labour's Attlee-era idealism with its most recent tenure in power. "The liberal left destroyed every bit of my youth," howls James Dean Bradfield, not a sentence you hear that often amid the non-stop oldies on Steve Wright in the Afternoon....full text |
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