Manic Street Preachers - Postcards From A Young Man
Much has been said of this, the Manic Street Preachers’ tenth studio album, not least of all by the band themselves.
Both James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire have referred to the album as "one last shot at mass communication": an unashamed desire to be back on the radio with their anthemic choruses, and a perfectly understandable one for a band with such a strong legacy.
In a sign of the times, ‘(It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love’ - the lead single from the album - currently sits on the playlists of Radio 2, 6 Music and XFM, but is nowhere to be seen on the Radio 1 playlist amongst the Biebers and the Perrys.
The band however were unlikely to have been naïve enough to think that they can infiltrate the modern music buying tastes and trends of the digital age, and the generally younger demographic of such stations.
Instead, their approach is seemingly aimed at (in addition to their pre-Richey devotees) the several generations of “traditional” music buyers and casual fans guilty of forgetting about them when previous albums have been released without proper singles.
In short, this introduction to the album (it is the opening track as well as the opening single) is nostalgic, and it works effectively. But does the rest of the album match up to this?
The title track of the album follows the currently airing single, and continues the album in a similar vein: strings carry the waves of emotion from Bradfield’s tales of humanist struggles and the subsequent courage in attempting to triumph over them.
‘Some Kind Of Nothingness’ concludes a trio of passionate opening tracks, at which point the comparisons to Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours - the albums associated with the commercial heights of their 90s prominence - become unmistakeably apparent (as was no doubt intended).
Whilst the Manics sound has never been overly complicated, ‘Hazleton Avenue’ is rather too simplistic by their usual standards, but works reasonably well within the track listing as it introduces the gradual build up of ‘Auto-Intoxication’; the first track in which Bradfield truly raises his vocals up a notch.
‘Golden Platitudes’ (one of three tracks on the album to feature a gospel choir) and ‘I Think I Found It’ fall foul of being ‘filler’ as the album’s duration gets past the halfway mark, but it fortunately gets back on track with ‘A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun’. Lyrically, it is a concerned outcry against the media’s power in all its varied forms; musically, the band genuinely sounds like they are enjoying themselves – it is the complete package for any Manics fan.
As with its beginning, the album ends with three strong tracks, of which ‘All We Make Is Entertainment’ stands out with its poignant message, and one which is highly appropriate at this point in the band’s long and illustrious career.
Overall, there is enough strong material here for it to sit proudly amongst the likes of ‘The Everlasting’ and ‘Australia’. Whilst it doesn’t quite have the immediate impact of their previous work, Postcards From A Young Man nevertheless deserves to be the “mass communication” that Bradfield and Wire were hoping for.
Realistically, in the digital age that the band are clearly conscious of, it is unlikely to amount to reliving those former moments of their career, but if this should happen to be their swan song then it will certainly be a strong and appropriate conclusion to what they started almost twenty years ago.
Both James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire have referred to the album as "one last shot at mass communication": an unashamed desire to be back on the radio with their anthemic choruses, and a perfectly understandable one for a band with such a strong legacy.
In a sign of the times, ‘(It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love’ - the lead single from the album - currently sits on the playlists of Radio 2, 6 Music and XFM, but is nowhere to be seen on the Radio 1 playlist amongst the Biebers and the Perrys.
The band however were unlikely to have been naïve enough to think that they can infiltrate the modern music buying tastes and trends of the digital age, and the generally younger demographic of such stations.
Instead, their approach is seemingly aimed at (in addition to their pre-Richey devotees) the several generations of “traditional” music buyers and casual fans guilty of forgetting about them when previous albums have been released without proper singles.
In short, this introduction to the album (it is the opening track as well as the opening single) is nostalgic, and it works effectively. But does the rest of the album match up to this?
The title track of the album follows the currently airing single, and continues the album in a similar vein: strings carry the waves of emotion from Bradfield’s tales of humanist struggles and the subsequent courage in attempting to triumph over them.
‘Some Kind Of Nothingness’ concludes a trio of passionate opening tracks, at which point the comparisons to Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours - the albums associated with the commercial heights of their 90s prominence - become unmistakeably apparent (as was no doubt intended).
Whilst the Manics sound has never been overly complicated, ‘Hazleton Avenue’ is rather too simplistic by their usual standards, but works reasonably well within the track listing as it introduces the gradual build up of ‘Auto-Intoxication’; the first track in which Bradfield truly raises his vocals up a notch.
‘Golden Platitudes’ (one of three tracks on the album to feature a gospel choir) and ‘I Think I Found It’ fall foul of being ‘filler’ as the album’s duration gets past the halfway mark, but it fortunately gets back on track with ‘A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun’. Lyrically, it is a concerned outcry against the media’s power in all its varied forms; musically, the band genuinely sounds like they are enjoying themselves – it is the complete package for any Manics fan.
As with its beginning, the album ends with three strong tracks, of which ‘All We Make Is Entertainment’ stands out with its poignant message, and one which is highly appropriate at this point in the band’s long and illustrious career.
Overall, there is enough strong material here for it to sit proudly amongst the likes of ‘The Everlasting’ and ‘Australia’. Whilst it doesn’t quite have the immediate impact of their previous work, Postcards From A Young Man nevertheless deserves to be the “mass communication” that Bradfield and Wire were hoping for.
Realistically, in the digital age that the band are clearly conscious of, it is unlikely to amount to reliving those former moments of their career, but if this should happen to be their swan song then it will certainly be a strong and appropriate conclusion to what they started almost twenty years ago.
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