New Music Review

Manic Street Preachers
Journal for Plague Lovers
Columbia Records
MP3 Album download









When I got up this morning, I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to purchase some new music this afternoon, listen to it, and then write about it tonight. Being that it's Tuesday, I headed over to Criminal Records on my lunch hour to see what they had available. I looked at the list of today's releases, and the only thing that really piqued my interest was the latest release by The Dynamites. Alas, Criminal had yet to receive that particular shipment, so that was not meant to be. I perused their selection of newer vinyl and decided that Dinosaur Jr.'s latest effort wasn't new enough, and that Yo La Tengo's new one, although still pretty new at one week old, would probably bore the shit out of me. Although the prospect of giving them a shitty review was fairly enticing, the fact that it would have cost me roughly 20 bucks for an LP I would never listen to again was the dealbreaker. I left Criminal Records empty-handed this afternoon, and let me tell you that does not happen very often.

I got back to the office and decided that I was still going to listen to some new music today and write about it later this evening. I got on Amazon, and started looking at their list of MP3 albums that went on sale today. Digital downloads really aren't my bag, but I was a man on a mission, so I wasn't about to let medium preference dissuade me. There was very little that struck my fancy, but I did see that the latest album by Manic Street Preachers, Journal for Plague Lovers, was now on sale. My uncle Bob (from the U.K.) was the first person to turn me on to these guys; that would have been around 1992, if memory serves. If you're not familiar with this band, it's another one of those situations that eerily mirrors part of the plotline from the film Eddie and the Cruisers. Basically, the guitar player and primary lyricist for the Preachers, Richey Edwards, mysteriously vanished on February 1, 1995 and never resurfaced. He was declared 'presumed deceased' late last year. The reason why you probably haven't heard about this before is because these guys are from Wales, thus nobody in the U.S. gives a shit.

I read a brief description of the album and saw that this album consisted entirely of songs built around lyrics that Edwards had given to bassist Nicky Wire shortly before his disappearance. That sounded interesting enough, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger. Shortly after doing so, I realized that the album was actually released in May, and it was the digital version that saw it's release today.

Goddammit.

Okay, I don't care if it's brand new or not, I'm still reviewing it tonight.

Though I've never considered myself that big of a fan, I've always had some appreciation for Manic Street Preachers. The story is fascinating, and a lot of the music is good. They definitely sound like guys who all grew up listening to Slade, and I can dig that. The lyrics were always good, in particular the songs written by Edwards. Though never achieving much mainstream success, they did receive acclaim from many critics, and established something of a cult following.

Journal for Plague Lovers is a decent album. Primarily produced (or recorded, rather) by Steve Albini, it's starts off very strong with three good rockers: "Peeled Apples", "Jackie Collins Existential Question Time" and "Me and Stephen Hawking". This is classic Preachers, lots of crunchy hooks that remind me of Stiff Little Fingers, and really fucking bizarre lyrics. Unfortunately, it falls kind of flat after that. There are some boring ballads, namely "This Joke Sport Severed" and the hyper-strange "Facing Page: Top Left". James Dean Bradfield is an excellent hard rock singer, but his unmistakably Welsh accent doesn't lend itself very well to most ballads. In these instances, he sounds like Vince Neil being jabbed repeatedly with a number 2 pencil.

This record also includes some tracks that employ drum machines and other qualities from Electronic music, just enough that it's worth mentioning, but not enough that you can classify it as Electronica. This isn't new territory for the Preachers, but I never cared for it when they did it before. It works okay on one track, "Marlon J.D.", but it's the heavy part of that song that makes it go, and it probably would have been better without the drum machine. The rest of the album consists mostly of not great, but not offensive filler material, and closes out with the very good "William's Last Words", which sounds awfully like the suicide note of a very poetic man who desperately needed some help.

All in all, this is a pretty solid effort, and kudos to Albini (a guy whose work I have a love/hate relationship with) for doing a great job with the sound on it. It's a must have for fans, and a worthwhile purchase for people that like hard rock, and can't find anything new to listen to. Allmusic.com gave it 4 1/2 stars out of a potential 5. That's too high. Richdork gave it 7.8 out of 10. That is also too high, in my opinion, but I'm not a big believer in numerical rating or alphabetic grading systems for rock and roll records. What's the fucking point? If you're still around 20 years after you reviewed it the first time, you're going to re-review it when the 'anniversary remaster' version comes out, and it's going to get a different score.

I'll sum it up by saying this: it's a pretty good record by a pretty good band. In the pantheon of Cock Rock bands from the U.K., Manic Street Preachers are quite a bit better than Primal Scream, but not nearly as good as The Cult. Make no mistake, these guys are Cock Rock. They were lyrically superior to these bands, for sure, but if getting a political agenda across was the whole point, then playing cock rock was the wrong canvas for that painting. It's a cold harsh reality, but the reality nonetheless. The thought of Bon Scott doing Woody Guthrie is going to give me nightmares. But these guys are still pretty decent.