Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go

Only ever having owned (i.e. stolen and copied my Mum’s copy of) ‘Forever Delayed’ – Manic Street Preachers’ 2002 greatest hits album – I’ve never actually reeeeally listened to a ‘real’ Manics’ album. I’ve always managed to follow their singles, and have been treated to the familiar sound of my Mum’s FIVE DISC CD player constantly shuffling it’s way through an assortment of their albums every time a new one is released. (She’s been to see them about twenty-something times. Seriously. If you ever go to one of their gigs, she’s the one in the pink feather boa screaming ‘I love you Nicky Wire’ from the back of the crowd somewhere. Yeah. I know…) But I am quite genuinely a fan of the stuff they’ve released, and thought it might be worth seeing whether their album tracks are able to deliver as strongly as their singles do.

After some intense research and indecisiveness, I decided I would give their 1996 album ‘Everything Must Go’ a bit of a whirl. It’s the first album written as a three-piece after the disappearance of guitarist Richey James the year before, and it would be interesting to see how the band presented their fourth album after losing, professionally, their main lyricist, and independently, a very close friend.

However, presumably expected to be a disheartening dedication to Richey James, the band seem to steer themselves away from entering into that vicinity, instead releasing a powerful, almost Brit-poppy sound that doesn’t burden itself with Richey James’ absence. Not that would be a bad thing necessarily. It’s just that it doesn’t do that. Alright!?!

‘Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier’ struck me at first as probably the weakest song on the album, but after giving the track a few more plays and having a read through of the lyrics, it’s actually a really interesting first track. Based around an Elvis impersonator standing on Blackpool Pier, the song delivers a unique and unusual theme (something which many of the tracks on this album, and the Manics’ discography in general, tend to do). The sarcastic delivery of lines such as ‘Fake royalty second hand sequin facade’ gives this song the edge that it needs to keep you interested, touching on the absurdity of an ‘American trilogy in Lancashire pottery’. It’s simultaneously angry, depressing and actually quite funny, and emerged to be a song I grew to quite like.

‘A Design for Life’ enters next as one of the well-established anthems for the working classes during the 90’s. Maybe not quite as reputable as Jarvis Cocker’s ‘Common People’ or Damon Alban’s ‘Parklife’, vocalist James Dean Bradfield states that ‘we are not allowed to spend/as we are told that this is the end’ and that ‘we only wanna get drunk’, giving it enough strength to make this probably the most iconic of the Manics’ singles, and definitely one of their best tracks to be released. Continuing onto another of the Manics’ singles, ‘Kevin Carter’ is notable for being one of the three songs on the album to which the lyrics are attributed to Richey James, written before his disappearance. Lyrically, the song doesn’t say much at all other than making references to Pulitzer Prize winner, Kevin Carter, who (Wikipedia…) killed himself after making worldwide fame following his photograph of a starving African child crawling along the floor as a vulture looks on from the distance. The song is a perfect example of the brilliance of the Manic Street Preacher’s approach to writing. The lyrics don’t need to say too much, as the reference to Kevin Carter alone is enough to portray what they want to say, but are instead focused on being written almost in the form of a poem, with James Dean Bradfield doing nothing to alter the words in order to fit a tune, coercing himself into writing a song around the lyrics so that they can be sung as they are –which makes Richey James’ approach to musical creation highly admirable, and is something I don’t feel Nicky Wire’s songs manage to match quite as well on this album.

‘Enola/Alone’ is a strong fourth track, pretty much just a very ‘Manic-esque’ (I’m gonna start using that phrase as the defining description of pretty much every other track on this album by the way, just to warn you now) sounding song, being both optimistic and pessimistic in it’s lyrical content. ‘But all I want to do is live/No matter how miserable it is’.

Again, we reach another of the album’s classic singles with album title track ‘Everything Must Go’, a Manic-esque song apologising for something. I’m not sure what it is they’re apologising for, but GODDAMN it is it a good song. ‘Small Black Flowers That Grow In the Sky’ again tackles an alternative subject, in that it’s written about animal cruelty. It’s a soft, delicate sounding song that doesn’t really seem to fit in with the rest of the album. I wasn’t a huge fan of this song. It’s alright. I just don’t really see the point in it to be honest. However, it’s then followed by the upbeat, optimistic, Manic-esque track ‘The Girl Who Wanted To Be God’, assuring us that even though ‘There are times when you feel hopeless’, the ‘dawn is still breaking’ and there are always good things to come. Thanks Manics! I feel all good again now after you momentarily brought the mood down! Woo! Yeah!

I don’t really know what ‘Removables’ is about to be quite honest. I had a quick little Google but nobody else really seems to know either. It’s good. I like it. I just really don’t have a fucking clue what it’s about.

‘Australia’ is the fourth Manic-esque single to feature on this album, which again feels very upbeat and happyhappyhappy, but is aaaaactually about feeling fed up with life, and having one of those moments where you just want to get away from it all. ‘I want to fly and run ‘til it hurts/Sleep for a while and speak no words’, before seemingly mocking the use of ‘in Australia’ as people’s common referral to it as the furthest away place that you can go.

‘Interiors (Song for Willem De Kooning) is a Manic-esque song about Alzheimer’s. I think. I did research it. I just can’t remember. HAHAHAHAHAHA only kidding it’s actually an emotionally upsetting, torturous and rather serious disease which we really shouldn’t joke about. Bloody good song though. ‘Further Away’ is also a bloody good song. A Manic-esque track which I think touches on the subject of a dying old man reminiscing about his childhood. It has really good opening lyrics. I won’t put them here. It’s too long. Google it though. I really like them. So do it. NOW!

Final track ‘No Surface All Feeling’ struck me straight away as possibly the best song on this album. The chorus is hellishly strong, (Hellishly?!? I don’t even know where that came from, but boy hickety will I be using it again!) and wraps up the album in a powerful, Manic-esque way.

And so, the answer to ‘are the Manic Street Preachers’ albums as good as their singles?’ is – yes. I guess they are. In that they’re all just very Manic-esque. In fairness, I really enjoyed this album, and it tended to get better the more I listened to it. It’s really worth reading along to some of the lyrics as you listen to get a better understanding of the odd but workable choices of themes in their songs as well. But the only thing I would say (other than the other 1257 words of things that I did say), is that it’s probably only worth listening to this album if you like the Manic Street Preachers, because it is – as pointed out at one point somewhere in this review – a very Manic-esque album. It is a good, powerful and surprisingly upbeat album, but it is also just pretty much what you expect from a Manics’ album. Not that that’s a bad thing at all. I’m just saying. It’s… Manic-esque.

Immediate stand out tracks:

A Design for Life; No Surface All Feeling; Kevin Carter; Enola/Alone; Australia

Link to album:

http://open.spotify.com/user/spillee86/playlist/6gAPAhO5f1VVqnUTIvmXr5

The Cure - Wish

I’ve managed to have two arguments with myself this week in regards to my blog. One of which went something along the lines of this:

‘Come on now Lee. Let’s just put The Stone Roses to one side for a second while we-‘

‘No!’

‘Hey. Woah. Come on. You need to listen to a different album now for that blog thing that you’ve decided to commit to-‘

‘No!’

‘What… what do you mean no? You’re the one that decided to write this thing. We can’t just review ‘The Stone Roses’ again.’

‘Ooh! Maybe we could just review ‘The Sto-‘

‘We’re not going to review ‘The Stone Roses’ again! What about The Cure? Eh? Yeah? You like The Cure? Why don’t we try The Cure?’

‘Well... I do quite like The Cure I guess…’

‘Exactly! You love The Cure! Now, why don’t we go find a Cure album to listen to whil… No! Lee! LEE! Turn The Stone Roses off for one fucking second!!’

And so, eventually, after a self-inflicted Stone Roses ban and a brief mini tantrum, myself and I ventured onto Spotify to try and decide which Cure album we were going to review for this second blog, which then resulted in a slightly more sophisticated debate as to which Cure ‘era’ would be an appropriate place for us to start (I’m gonna switch back to first person now. The whole ‘two of me’ thing should’ve died ages ago…). With my knowledge thinly spread over their discography like a singles-esque pâté, I was aware of the fact that I could either find myself curled up in a foetal position on the floor crying to ‘Pictures Of You’, or tap dancing down the street and swinging off lampposts to ‘The Lovecats’, so in the end I decided that a safe place to begin would be the happy medium of upbeat-yet-deeply-depressing album, ‘Wish’.

After the first listen, I found myself hanging off a lamppost in the street crying my fucking eyes out. The album quite safely covers both bases, and although on first listen it seems to jump from one extreme to the other quite rapidly, a couple more plays revealed that the album does manage to lift you in and out of the darker moments in a more constructive way than it initially seems.

The opening track, aptly named ‘Open’, is a really strong start to the album. The song itself doesn’t really side with the ‘happier’ or ‘depressed’ elements which the rest of the album fluctuates between, but it comes in strong and allows the listener to enter the album quite comfortably without being hit too hard with any sort of Robert Smith depressiveness. ‘High’ follows the first track with a definitive Cure sounding guitar and ‘sparkle’ sounds that make you think maybe this album isn’t going to be quite as emotionally draining as you may have previously thought, before completely contradicting all of your foolish expectations with a hideously dark third track, ‘Apart’. I couldn’t quite decide if I liked this track or not. Not only for the reason that a part (genuinely not a pun) of it sounds like someone had hit the ‘Choir’ setting on a secondary school Casio keyboard, but because it just creates such a bleak atmosphere that it is genuinely quite a difficult song to listen to. A couple of tracks which feature later on in the album (I’m getting to them!! Bloody hell, be patient will you!) are similar in style, but ‘Apart’ feels as though it’s written literally just in order to depress the listener, and ends up leaving you wanting to skip it about 2.7 minutes in. Which, if you do, will lead you onto the slightly, slightly less downbeat song, ‘From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea’, which didn’t really strike me as anything overly spectacular, but was literally an O-K song.

HOWEVER, after a pretty average start to the album, Robert Smith and whichever other members were knocking around at this point start to kick it off with a sudden change in tone, bringing out the ‘funk’ in a ‘fabulous fabulous’ ‘Wendy Time’. Although the sound becomes much more upbeat, the lyrical content, of what I’ve interpreted to be about some riiiiiight ol’ manipulative cow, remain quite sinister and dark, giving the song a depth that is only really revealed after a few more listens.

‘Doing the Unstuck’ is the first of two tracks on the album that really manages to lift the mood, and does so with a powerfully optimistic feel, with Robert Smith reminding us that ‘it’s never too late to get up and go’. The song has a mysteriously ‘odd’ feel-good element to it that I can’t quite seem to put my finger on, but already I can feel this becoming a bit of a personal favourite from the band’s back catalogue, so ‘let’s get happy’, and move onto Cure classic ‘Friday I’m in Love’ - the second of the two ‘happier’ tracks. I’ve never really worked out what this song means, so I’m going to look it up now… Ah. In the words of Robert Smith, it’s literally just a ‘dumb pop song’ they wrote about looking forward to weekly Friday dates with a girl. Aw. That’s actually quite nice innit? What a lovely song…

Right. Now. HERE is where the album decides to take another sudden turn. One minute you’re carelessly singing along about being in love on a Friday, and then BAM! The Casio keyboard is cracked out again for the darker track ‘Trust’. Hoooooowever, I actually really liked this song. The way Robert Smith sings on this track feels much more personal than ‘Apart’, and lyrically is something I think heart-broken listeners will really be able to relate to. Although thrust upon the listener quite suddenly, this song has a really strong impact after you manage to settle into it.

My first encounter of ‘A Letter to Elise’ was a distorted, faster Blink-182 cover I’d heard them do on an MTV Icon show for The Cure years before I’d even realised who these crazy haired bastards were. But, obviously having listened to the original since, it’s a song that I’ve grown to really like over the years. It’s such a lovely song to listen to, and is by far one of The Cure’s greatest singles, which fits really well into this album.

The guitar feedback we hear at the start of ‘Cut’ leads into a slightly out of place, almost punk-rocky song. A sound which I’ve not heard used in any other Cure track before, but one which seemed to work really well. Again, this song contains intense lyrical content which could quite easily be overlooked when hearing for the first few times.

And, as expected, we knew we weren’t going to just breeze through without one more downhearted song slotted in towards the end of the album. ‘To Wish Impossible Things’, assumedly a track for which the album gains its title from, is a touching song mourning the end of a once hopeful relationship, which fits in quite nicely before the final track, ‘End’. This last song finishes the album with a heavier, slightly distorted guitar that bears resemblance to an almost Placebo-y kind of sound. Robert Smith’s continuous requests to ‘please stop loving’ him wrap the album up rather neatly with the juxtapositionary feel which the album successfully carries throughout, leaving us not quite necessarily on a high, but nor, thankfully, on too much of a low.

To be totally honest, I wasn’t overly keen on this album on first listen. But after allowing myself to adapt to the frequent emotional adjustments, it really did grow on me. Although the start of the album seems slightly weaker, not necessarily in content, but in ‘feel’ (there’s surely a better word to use than that… let me Shift+F7 it…). Although the start of the album seems slightly weaker, not necessarily in content, but in its ‘ambience’, the rest of the album evokes some strong emotions which Robert Smith has always managed to exploit rather well. The union of hopelessness in tracks such as ‘Trust’ and a seemingly underlying hopefulness in ‘Doing the Unstuck’ gives the album a variety and edge that I don’t really think many other artists other than The Cure are able to provide.

Immediate stand out tracks:

Doing the Unstuck; A Letter to Elise; Friday I’m In Love; Wendy Time; End

Link to album:

http://open.spotify.com/user/spillee86/playlist/5ofa4UReNHwADju1gY23

The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

Well, what with the 2012 reunion tour of The Stone Roses being a bit of a hotly discussed topic over the past few months, it dawned on me that the more I read or heard about it, the more I realised that I knew absolutely fuck all about the band, their albums, or pretty much anything in general about one of Britain’s most iconic artists in the last BILLION years. And so, after slipping the kindly lent CD into my laptop and slipping myself into something more comfortable (i.e nothing), I whacked my headphones on, lay back on my bed with a cup of tea, and journeyed through the greatest 48.7 minutes of my whole entire existence. (FYI - I have no idea how long a .7 is…).

48.7 minutes later (it’s probably like… 38 seconds or something), I smashed my finger against the pause button on my laptop, just before Stone Sour’s only good song could try and sneak its way onto the back end of my ‘shuffle off’ iTunes enjoyment (and we can safely say that you don’t have to worry about them being mentioned in this blog ever, ever, again), went straight back to the first track of ‘The Stone Roses’, and did it all again, seeing as the last 48.7 (48 minutes and 38 seconds) were distracted slightly by my sheer amazement of just how fucking good it was. And then after the second listen, I did the same again. And then after that, I ran downstairs, quickly made another cup of tea, ran back up, threw my headphones on, turned off Stone fucking Sour (…bollocks), and did exactly the same again, because I had finally understood what all the bloody fuss was about.

As soon as Mani’s bass guitar quietly enters the album at the 40 second mark of ‘I Wanna Be Adored’, I was genuinely hooked. And with the rest of the band joining in one by one over the next minute, culminating in the hushed vocals of Ian Brown as the last addition of the four members, I realised what I’d been missing out on. The song’s powerful, creeping sound builds together underneath the repetition of the line ‘I wanna be adored’, making  an astonishingly brilliant introduction to the album, and stands to be one of the greatest opening tracks I’ve heard in a looooong time. Immediately followed by the catchy chorus of ‘She Bangs The Drums’, and the almost 60’s-esque whimsical, ‘hippy-ish’ sound of ‘Waterfall’, it’s clear to see why this bands unique sound had had such a huge impact on the music industry.

Now, before I trail off into a complete brown-nosing praise of the whole album, I must point out that if there’s one song on ‘The Stone Roses’ that I’m not too fond on, it would be the next track - ‘Don’t Stop’. Not because it’s a backwards recording of ‘Waterfall’, but because it’s a fucking backwards recording of ‘Waterfall’. And, to be quite honest, that eerie, unsettling sound of backwards music scares the absolute shitting fuck out of me. If you haven’t heard ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in reverse, then just don’t, because it is the scariest thing ever!! I mean, other than the ridiculously on-edge noise of backwards instruments and ghostly vocals, the song isn’t too bad. But it’s fucking backwards for fucks sake!! How anyone can listen to that without feeling every tiny little hair on their body rise up out of complete unnecessary fear I really do not know…

Luckily, the rest of the album is played forwards, as it should be, leading onto ‘Bye Bye Badman’. This is a lovely, heartfelt sounding song, about brutally wounding riot police with bits of rock. ‘I’m throwing stones at you man/I want you black and blue and I’m gonna make you bleed’. But the powerful appeal of this song comes from the contrast between the pure hatred in the lyrical content, sang with an almost apathetic feel as you picture Ian Brown carelessly drifting through a riot scene, humming along to himself as he hurls a petrol bomb into the face of a French police officer. If you don’t know, which you probably do, but some might not, like me until I looked it up, the song and iconic cover of the album are inspired by the Paris riots of 1968. The French national colours and scattered lemons used on the cover were inspired by the story of how the rioters used to carry lemons with them as an antidote to the police’s tear gas. So… yeah. Nice little fact there. Informative and interesting this blog isn’t it?

‘Elizabeth My Dear’ is a strange little medieval sounding interlude smack bang in the middle of the album. I’m not quite sure why it’s there, but it sounds nice and seems to work. So… well done there Stone Roses. ‘(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister’ is another enjoyable catchy little song that left me hanging on for it to end just so I could go back and listen to it again from the start.

‘Made Of Stone’ – the first single from the album – is another powerfully immense track. Immediately you feel as though you can sing along to the cries of ‘Sometimes I fantasise’ as the chorus kicks in, and the lyrics, the guitars, just… everything is just so powerful. It’s just a really, really good song. Listen to it. Oh – you have. It’s a really, really good song isn’t it? Yes. It is. AS IS, the fanciful float-along sound of ‘Shoot You Down’, and what I quickly discovered as a trademark of many of The Stone Rose’s songs in their ability to slowly build you up, teetering dangerously close to the point of climax, before quickly stopping altogether with ‘I’d love to do it and you know you’ve always had it coming’, and reverting back to the gentle teasing of their musical foreplay, leaving us shaking, dripping and begging for more.

‘This Is The One’ is a lovely penultimate song to the album, again flashing us it’s brilliance in the ever so quiet repetitive vocals softly sneaking through the loud harmonies (not really sure harmonies is the right word there, but it’ll do – I can’t be arsed to look it up) of the guitars and drums shrieking and smashing all over the place as the song progresses.

And then… oh and THEN, heck-diddly-doo, are we in for a treat. The only song I knew beforehand, the only contribution I could ever make in any Stone Rose’s related conversation, was that of their last song on the self-titled album. And what a song it is. Again, the band tease us in building the first verse up, letting the guitar get slightly heavier and the vocals get slightly louder as the drums get ready to rip into the chorus, before the band decide to relax and just fall straight back into another calm verse. And they do this, for THREE FUCKING VERSES. But when the chorus finally does ascend, boyyyy hickety it’s certainly worth the wait. All their quietly smug teasing makes being able to scream ‘I AM THE RESURRECTION AND I AM THE LIGHT’ that so much more satisfying. And after bursting out with some of the greatest feel good lyrics of all time, Ian Brown makes his exit and leaves us to be treated to a good four minutes of guitar soloing as the album comes to a close and leaves you feeling like you’ve just ejaculated your brain all over the wall. And as the song fades away, you’re just left there, lying on the bed. In silence. Sweaty and exhausted as you take a moment to catch your breath, grab a dirty sock from the laundry basket, wipe yourself down, and close your eyes as you hit play, lay back, and take it all again.

So, really, to be honest, my 2012 musical journey feels as though it’s already peaked, and we’re not even a week in yet. ‘The Stone Roses’ is indisputably one of the greatest albums of all time. People really haven’t been lying about it these past twenty years, and as a late addition to the fan club, I’d just like to say that, yes. I agree. There’s not much more I can say other than, if you do already own this album, then well done, and if you don’t already own this album, steal it from one of the people who said they do already own this album, and watch as the CD circulates around your friends homes in a beautiful loop of appreciation and petty theft.

And to those that just skipped to the end of my hard worked review, all you need to know is that I can summarise all of it in just one simple sentence.

I am a complete fucking idiot for never having listened to this album before.

Immediate stand out tracks:

Made Of Stone; I Wanna Be Adored; I Am the Resurrection; Bye Bye Badman; Waterfall

Link to album:

http://open.spotify.com/user/spillee86/playlist/6pnIBS2cnolUT51anXrVUY

Old Music, New Reviews

So, basically, the whole idea of this ‘blog’, is that I am a self-acclaimed music fan, who actually hasn’t really listened to even nearly enough albums to consider myself a self-acclaimed music fan, and who has therefore decided that, in an age of talent show dustmen and dinnerladies filling the seams of our now rather embarrassing UK charts, it’s probably about time I actually sat down and listened to some ‘new’ albums. And I place ‘new’ in inverted commas because to be honest, these albums aren’t actually ‘new’ in the slightest. They are a concoction of ‘old(er)’ albums that I never got round to listening to properly. And I italicise albums because I am aware of the albums and bands I’m picking to review. I’ll know maybe a handful of facts about it or them, a few of its or their songs, and a decent enough understanding of what it’s about or who they are, but it’s more that I haven’t actually got round to sitting down, plugging in my bit-too-loud speakers or far-too-quiet headphones, and giving these rather renowned (Ctrl+I) albums the full on, full focused and full frontal (I am genuinely quite often naked when I'm listening to these albums first time round… only when I’m in my room though… and on my own… not like, when I’m listening to them on the train or walking down the high street or something...) appreciation that they may or may not deserve.

But the point here is that, though many of you will be more than aware of some/most/all of the albums I’ll hopefully choose to review over the next however long, firstly, I am looking to cover a slight range in genres, so there is a chance that a couple of gems might pop up that you yourself might have accidentally missed out over the years, and in reading my extremely late reviews you could be inspired to quickly sneak off, give the recommended album a quick run through, and then come back and shout at people in the street about how you owned that album long before their father’s slightly perished condom snapped nine months before they popped out and started polluting the earth with their narrow minded lack of appreciation for your all time favourite album!

Secondly, if you did already buy, borrow or steal said album before the whole unplanned pregnancy fiascos of random pedestrians, and it’s already sitting on your CD rack with a thin layer of dust resting atop of it because you wore that badboy out in the yesterdecade, then it might just be quite interesting to see how my fresh little naïve ears have taken to it’s classic-isity (it could be a word).

And thirdly, it just might not do either of those things and you’ll realise that you could be well into a self-pleasure session at this point if you hadn’t stumbled across this piece of shit website.

So, yes, anyway – in order to avoid having to listen to Radio 1’s chart show every Sunday night to try and keep up with what’s going on in the music world, I’ve decided that 2012 should probably be a safe enough year to overlook, and instead I need to stop veering music-based conversations towards early 00's punk rock in order to know what I'm talking about, log into my freshly paid for Spotify account, get naked, and brush up on some albums which I really should have probably listened to a long, long time ago.