Hotel Lights - Hotel Lights (2004)

1) You Come and I Go; 2) A.M. Slow Golden Hit; 3) Miles Behind Me; 4) I Am a Train; 5) Small Town Shit; 6) What You Meant; 7) Follow Through; 8) Stumblin' Home Winter Blues; 9) Marvelous Truth; 10) The Mumbling Years; 11) Anatole; 12) Motionless; 13) Love to Try

Gentle melodies to warm up with during those cold winter nights. It's one recipe throughout but it's a solid soul food dish.

Key tracks: "A.M. Slow Golden Hit", "I Am a Train", "Follow Through"

As the thunderbolt drummer for Ben Folds Five, Darren Jessee didn't really get to show his songwriter side out much in public, though if you read the credits to the albums you can find him in surprisingly pretty places - "Brick" and "Magic", to name a couple. Following the dissolution of Ben Folds Five, Jessee hung around and about for a while preparing for a solo release, which eventually transformed into Hotel Lights once Jessee recruited some famous friends (both Archers of Loaf drummer Mark Price and Sparklehorse touring guitarist Alan Weatherhead feature as part of the line-up for the debut). If you're only familiar with Ben Folds Five superficially the direction Jessee took might be a surprise but the more you look at his writing credits within the band, the more it makes sense - because Hotel Lights is a placid and pretty songwriter's album.

Jessee described the idea behind the name for Hotel Lights as the duality between the optimism of finally seeing the window lights of your destination hotel at the last stretch of a long drive, and the stark fluorescent lights within the hotel bathroom where "you can see all your scars". Hotel Lights as a band is lot more of the former and very little, if at all, the latter. With a couple of exceptions the thirteen songs that make up the self-titled debut album are gentle ballad-like singer/songwriters tunes, weary and tired but happy and tranquil, with a lot of gently strummed guitars, delicate piano flourishes and synthesizer jolts that can be best described as 'early 2000s'. Jessee as a lead vocalist doesn't have a voice that could belt out a tune, but it's the kind of soft guide that's ideal for the material he specialises in. It's the type of album that finds a natural place in the last hours of a waning evening, blissful but tired and ready to sink into a comforting sound.

You'd think a solid 54 minutes of the same mood and soundscape could get tiring, but between Jessee's admittable gift for a perfectly affable melody and the overwhelmingly atmospheric touch it's a surprisingly strong bunch of songs. Jessee and the crew do break the mold a few times and go for something a bit peppier, but then the album's perkiest cut, the organ-riffing "rocker" "Marvelous Truth" is also the only song here I'd happily cut - between the corny fruity organ and the wuss-rock sound that simply does not suit the band, it's an awkward fit. "I Am a Train" holds the fastest tempo on the record and is a much better fit to the rest of the album, because it takes the general sound and simply utilises its charm in a somewhat more extroverted way, with some lush guitars and moments of gentle explosion that lift the song naturally.

The star of the show are those wistful autumn/winter moments of slow, warm melodies though and while they're not all incredible, the batting average is consistently good and Jessee drops a couple of real hidden classics too. "A.M. Slow Golden Hit" is largely perfect and absolutely nails the weary hope that Jessee aimed for with the band's name, packing an awful lot of poignant atmosphere in its simple form - it's amazing how much you can do with a guitar, some synthetic handclaps and a bunch of additional flourishes. It manages to hit the feeling of nostalgic longing that its lyrics directly reference and the aura of getting lost in an old song that's as familiar as a blood relative (and in 2020 it has become one, natch), and it is absolutely at home when watching the dark roads go by through the car window. "Follow Through" is another clear winner, dedicating a lot of its space for building instrumental sections that lead with a gorgeous organ, and the result is a spellbinding late night anthem where you'd gladly let the last loop go on forever. A number of other stand outs exists - "You Come and I Go", "Small Town Shit", "Stumblin' Home Winter Blues" - but they're largely just different items cut from the exact same cloth: variations on a particularly lovely base recipe of pianos, guitars and lullaby melodies.

Jessee would keep recording more Hotel Lights albums with changing lineups, and I own a few more, but on a brutally honest level the other records haven't really had the longevity of the first one - they are more of the same again and again, just with diminishing returns. The shine of the debut is in part due to despicably personal reasons: there's a lot of references to associations and nostalgia within this review because that's what the album represents to me, having had ordered it from the States back when that was still a novel thing and after already having gotten acquainted with a third of the album through the freebie MP3s shared via the official website, and it vividly takes me back to that period. I also talk about its late night qualities a lot because that's when I found myself listening to it often, headphones on in the dark of my room. But I've owned some of the other Hotel Lights releases for nearly as long and so I'm comfortable enough in saying that Jessee's songwriting is generally the sharpest here and that's why it's stuck around most of all. If Hotel Lights are a bit of a one-trick act, then here on the debut that act is still fresh to impress. Stack it against the records by his former band or its titular star's solo albums and it's likely going to get overshadowed, but Hotel Lights knows its place: it's a comfort food album, welcoming and cosy, and just the right thing for the moments that call for such things.

Rating: 8/10

Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible (1994)

1) Yes; 2) IfwhiteAmericatoldthetruthitsworldwouldfallapart; 3) Of Walking Abortion; 4) She Is Suffering; 5) Archives of Pain; 6) Revol; 7) 4st 7lb; 8) Mausoleum; 9) Faster; 10) This Is Yesterday; 11) Die in the Summertime; 12) The Intense Humming of Evil; 13) P.C.P.

Confrontational, nihilistic, visceral - Manics unleash their anxiety and Richey Edwards digs deep into the darkest parts of his imagination.

Key tracks: "Archives of Pain", "Faster", "This Is Yesterday"

It's really rather impossible to talk about The Holy Bible, the Manics' third album, without talking about Richey Edwards at the same time. Edwards had never been an important member to the band musically - his guitar playing was rudimentary, non-existent on record and literally silenced on stage - but he drove the band forward thematically through their image-heavy early years, where their manifestos were as important as the music. Edwards was largely in charge of the band's visuals both in artwork and the frequent costume design, he was one of the band's primary spokespeople in front of the press and his idiosyncratic lyrical tone gave the band their own unique voice. While he shared many of these duties 50/50 with bassist Nicky Wire, The Holy Bible saw him take a larger creative control of the process. His mental and physical health began to deteriorate following the tour for Gold Against the Soul, and it spurred him on a wild creative spree. He was churning out lyric after lyric, and they had started to become increasingly cryptic and disturbed, filled with a sense of loathing for the self and everything else.

The Holy Bible by association has become a monument of a pained man lost in his own mind, and the band themselves lionise it as such, as Richey's album. Wire had moved to a new house after getting recently married and with Richey's new direction being so far in his own world, Wire found that he wasn't able to contribute to the lyrics in the same fashion as he had before. This lead to Edwards inadvertently taking direct control of where the band was heading thematically, with Wire merely contributing a few songs and the occasional title. Edwards' lyrics at this point barely functioned as such in form or format, and the material was also significantly darker and increasingly hard to decipher. Some of the new songs were painfully autobiographical even if disguised, most blatantly the anorexia-tackling "4st 7lb". Others were erratic political commentaries and allegories, some of which flippantly addressed the topics of the day while others were abnormally brutal (the band to this day still can't say whether the death-penalty favouring "Archives of Pain" is meant to be serious or sarcastic); though it's worth noting that the most blatant political cut, the obviously targeting "IfwhiteAmerica..." was mostly Wire's work. Heavy traces of deadpan irony and sarcasm lace through most lines, and prevalent throughout is particularly violent and morbid imagery: the opener "Yes" launches right into a narrative of tearing off an underage boy prostitute's genitalia in its first chorus and that's just a prelude for what the rest of the album contains. The words are cold, nihilistic, hopeless and free-form - the stream-of-consciousness journals of a man viewing the world and seeing nothing worth salvaging.

But Edwards is half the story behind The Holy Bible. While the album is undeniably centered around its primary writer, the rest of the band were under creative crisis of their own. The process behind Gold Against the Soul had left an unsavoury taste in the whole band's mouth - too bombastic, too American, too much of big studio production. Shortly after its release the band had also lost a close friend in their manager Philip Hall, who had been a key element of the Manics ever getting a chance in the music world and who had been their guiding mentor. The band were going through a loss of direction and weren't certain how to recover from it, but their label's offers of even flashier studios definitely felt like the wrong step forward. In retaliation the band opted for the opposite, to pare things down and impose limits. The Holy Bible was recorded in a cheap studio with a tightly regimented, intense schedule, in an environment removed from any additional distractions. Absolute focus, no social life, only work - the band worked extended hours from morning until evening, strict and disciplined. The songs were approached methodically, each element and section scrutinised. Every part of the band's existence was centered around and obsessed over the music they were making.

The Holy Bible is a very visceral and instinctual album, but its songs required that kind of scrutiny. The Manics always worked on their music lyrics first, and the words Richey were providing required a new kind of focus and inventiveness from principal songwriters James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore in order to shape them into songs. The two responded to the challenge by similarly abandoning their former habits and the signature elements they had began to develop on the first two albums - and they went somewhere completely different. From a compositional point of view The Holy Bible is a humongous step askew for the Manics and at times it's borderline chaotic. The songs are full of various C- and D-sections that turn up once or twice and usually mutated in some way. Sometimes the songs suddenly change tract altogether, e.g. the intro to "PCP" is like from a wholly different song to the rest and "4st 7lb" flicks from anxiety-plagued dissonance to a waltz at halfway point. The verses erratically flip through vocal melodies because the structure of the lyrics dictate it so, and Bradfield's vocals are at times as abstract as the lyrics as he abandons all notion of English stress and syllable structure rules and squashes in Richey's lines into bars; the stuttering syllable blender of the pre-choruses of "Mausoleum" is a particularly brilliant example, and a key part of what makes that song hit so hard. If the words are off-kilter, Bradfield made their delivery to match.

The band also responded to the intensity of Edwards lyrics with a musical intensity of their own, so Bradfield's guitars scream and buzzsaw, while Moore's drums storm with military precision. Chaotic band breakdown outros are a regular occurrence, be it the accusatory and potently explicit screaming of "Of Walking Abortion" and "Faster" or the instrumental fury of "Archives of Pain", which corks its menacing intensity with an extended guitar solo that keeps accelerating before it hits the wall. While the words are full of dark thoughts towards everything, the music stays cold, detached and brutal, with mathematical precision in its curves and swerves rather than pathos or affecting melancholy. Rather than brood over everything, the Manics are detached, laying judgement but uncaringly of whether it's actually heard or agreed with - and that just makes songs like the ominously calm and collected "Yes" and the matter-of-fact delivery of "Faster" all the stronger. If there's a prevailing emotion peeking through, it's pure fury. The album is frequently cited as one of the darkest albums of the 1990s but that has always seemed a bit hyperbolic to me: it's vitriolic and grim for sure, but it's far from the kind of crushing defeatism that normally accompanies truly dark albums. The Holy Bible is, if anything, the opposite of wallowing in its anxiety: it's defiantly kicking around in the darkness, perhaps depressed but angry about it. It's full of vitriol, vim and vitality.

The Manics haven't fully abandoned their rock anthem genetics with The Holy Bible, but even the more traditional songs sound wraught and neurotic. Where Gold Against the Soul brought forward the notion of Manics as arena-embracing rock heroes, The Holy Bible's first taster was "Faster", a frantic post-punk fit where the closest thing to a crowd-pleaser is the repeated yells of "man kills everything". Much like the rest of the album, it's twitchy, twisted and detached, with outbursts of rage splattered across it. The Holy Bible is in a constant balancing act between sinking into that rage and finding some weird sense of humour out of it, with the sociopathically calm "Yes" in one end and the batshit dictator/sex-metaphore mashup pop punk of "Revol" on the other. "IfwhiteAmerica..." could have been a metal song if you tweaked its heaviness just a little bit, though in its current state it flips brilliantly between the molotov riot verses, Eagleland backing vocals of the bridge and riff-chugging choruses. The manic "Of Walking Abortion" and "Archives of Pain" are two of the album's most ravaged cuts where the neurotic flicks of the context surrounding the album push to surface. The latter in particular is fearsome in its inspired unhingedness, while also featuring one of the band's few iconic bass lines - and if anything describes the album's twisted nature, it's Bradfield sneakily slipping his own band's name into the litany of dictators and mass murderers as an off-the-cuff joke. That kind of erratic streak of attitude further stops The Holy Bible from being just a really dark album. Where Richey wasn't already hiding a very subtle sense of snark in the lyrics, Bradfield takes the opportunity to cut through the tension by occasionally sounding genuinely delighted he gets to go wild with the music. The devilish glee of "P.C.P.", kicking the walls down in peppy punk abandon at the end, finally offers a little bit of genuine free-spirit fun (or as close as you can get to it) right at the very end of the album in an unexpectedly light finale

Still, it has its dark spots. "4st 7lb" is downright harrowing because of how brutally naked emotionally it is, and the deranged verse melodies of "Die in the Summertime" give it a foreboding undertone that crawls under the skin. Even the unexpected tranquil of "This Is Yesterday", with its shimmery summery guitars and serene atmosphere, is ultimately a song that hides an incredible amount of sadness within its facade; but amongst its fellow songs, it still sounds like a momentary oasis in the middle of the frozen wasteland. "She Is Suffering" is an odd one out in first glance, with its more elegant production and disconcerningly groove-flirting, Nirvana-goes-disco rhythm sounding almost too suave in this kind company; but its haunting atmosphere placed together with the four-to-the-floor beat is a surprisingly effective combination. Even all these songs have pieces of them that stop them from going too deep, like the bright choruses of "Die in the Summertime" or the typically Manics-esque guitar solo breaking through "She Is Suffering". The only song that really just lingers in its mood is the brooding holocaust lament "The Intense Humming of Evil", which is as obviously serious as you'd expect: it's a sparsely arranged hollow ghost of a song built over an ominous drum loop, and it's utterly removed sound-wise from anything else the band had ever done. Out of everything on the album it's the song that most hammers in the sheer bleakness of the record's mindset, as if the band decided that the horror of its subject matter is too grave to not submit to it, and that in order to hammer it through the music should have only the most necessary elements and nothing more.

The diversity within its covers and the album's raw power is why The Holy Bible continues to amaze. On The Holy Bible the Manics accelerated furiously beyond their established scope and came up with something absolutely crazy, definitely inspired and absolutely unique. While they had already proven their worth as a powerful rock band, The Holy Bible's fixated intensity and irreverent musical attitude reveals a side of the band that they've very rarely let shine. Musically they're more adventurous, opening more doors than the last two albums combined, and some of the areas here still stand out in their uniqueness in the band's whole back catalogue. It's why The Holy Bible has always been to me more about its music as a whole than about its words - it's still thrilling in its off-the-cuff melodies and sheer strength, and listening through it is an intense experience because of how fervent it is. It's not quite a perfect record but it's close, and the gap is only down to personal minutae rather than any actual chinks in the armour.

In February 1995 Edwards left the hotel the band was staying right before the start of their American tour, and vanished; no trace of him has been found since. His disappearance closed off the first chapter of Manics' history, and ensured that the band could never really follow up on The Holy Bible even if they had wanted to (and much later on they would try). It not only sealed the album's legacy as Richey's last will and testament, but ensured that it would stay as a particularly fearsome and wholly unique creature within the band's discography. If their early days were characterised by the complete and sincere conviction in what the band were doing regardless of what the outside world was thinking, then The Holy Bible was its unexpected apex: it's singular in its vision and truly committed to its sound and themes, characterised by pure gut instinct far more than anything else they would go to record. As the most iconic line in the entire album puts it, "I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing".

Rating: 9/10

Viola - Melancholydisco (2005)

1) Sad Eyed Disco Dancers; 2) Violentia (Boys of Scandinavia Remix); 3) City Silhouette (Roger® Remix); 4) Nostalgia Amnesia; 5) Deepspeed (Kris Kylven Reconstruction & Remix); 6) Three Minutes Later (Iconcrash Remix); 7) Strange Delights; 8) Kiss and Break Up (Verneri Lumi Remix); 9) Halo Goodbye (Alien Mindbenders Rework); 10) Dim Challenger 

An EP inside a remix album. There's a clear winner between the two sides but you have to give some props for doing a convincing job marrying them together.

Key tracks: "Sad Eyed Disco Dancers", "City Silhouette (Roger Remix)", "Strange Delights"

Melancholydisco started out as an EP, with two members of the then-quartet Viola playing around with moving into a more synthesized sound. Then someone came up with the idea of inviting the band’s friends to play with the back catalogue and the project expanded into a remix album, released as a breather between albums. 

I mention this because the original EP is still buried inside Melancholydisco. Four songs of hearts being broken by the mirror ball, bittersweet synthpop for the sad eyed disco dancers. They’re exactly what the title says: melodramatic, danceable and utterly enthralled by their own cool. “Sad Eyed Disco Dancers” is nearly iconic in this regard, its pulsating bassline driving the hopelessly romantic yet stylishly nonchalant miserabilia onwards. “Nostalgia Amnesia” is hyperspeed heartache and its mad percussion section is borders between dancefloor filler and too hectic with its own energy. “Strange Delights” is a carefully optimistic sing-along anthem where the band’s pop heart explodes into full bloom. The last slow jam “Dim Challenger” finally calms the wild night down with its instrumental, near-ambient mood scape. They’re four great songs where Viola stretch their own borders and open new doors they’d walk through in their future, and they could have made an excellent EP on their own. 

The six accompanying remixes are almost a sideshow, not by virtue of being weak but because in comparison with the original tracks, they’re a much more incohesive bunch. That’s just the nature of remix albums obviously, but the internal consistency between the original tracks leaves the remixes to feel like added-on bonus tracks. But, it’s still a grab bag of quite successful reworks. Roger®’s version of “City Silhouette” and Alien Mindbenders’ “Halo Goodbye” are particularly excellent: Roger® turn “City Silhouette” into an atmospheric, high-speed night drive soundtrack that’s closest in spirit to the new tracks, while Alien Mindbenders ingeniously reverse the usual remix treatment by turning the keyboard/programming-heavy “Halo Goodbye” into a rock ballad, and it’s actually all kinds of brilliant. Meanwhile The Boys of Scandinavia’s funked up take on “Violentia” isn’t necessarily the most exciting one out of the lot but it’s the largest earworm and the most instantly irresistible. Iconcrash merely flesh out the formerly stripped down “Three Minutes Later” and the Verneri Lumi remix of “Kiss and Break Up” is a neat atmospheric, glitched-out treat that has its charms as it progresses and builds up on its atmosphere. It’s only really Kris Kylven’s version of “Deepspeed” that feels lacklustre, carrying the vibe of countless rock song remixes I’ve heard scattered across CD singles over the years which awkwardly remove the key points of the original version’s strength while failing to establish a real identity of its own either. 

But despite the remix selection having an arguably higher hitting ratio than most remix albums, they’ll always end up playing second fiddle to the original cuts. “Sad Eyed Disco Dancers” and “Strange Delights” are iconic Viola classics in my eyes, and none of the remixes can really compete with the inspiration and excellence of the new songs, no matter how good. You can practically hear how excited the half of Viola who worked on these were over the new possibilities provided by letting go of the strict band format. Admittedly, it would shortly mean radical shake-ups in the band’s line-up, but man – what a way to make a case for switching the course. They’re worth the price (or the free download these days, rather) alone: the remixes are bonus. 

Rating: 7/10

R.E.M. - Unplugged 1991 & 2001: The Complete Sessions (2014)

CD1 (1991): 1) Half a World Away; 2) Disturbance at the Heron House; 3) Radio Song; 4) Low; 5) Perfect Circle; 6) Fall on Me; 7) Belong; 8) Love Is All Around; 9) It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine); 10) Losing My Religion; 11) Pop Song 89; 12) Endgame; 13) Fretless; 14) Swan Swan H; 15) Rotary Eleven; 16) Get Up; 17) World Leader Pretend
CD2 (2001): 1) All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star); 2) Electrolite; 3) At My Most Beautiful; 4) Daysleeper; 5) So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry); 6) Losing My Religion; 7) Country Feedback; 8) Cuyahoga; 9) Imitation of Life; 10) Find the River; 11) The One I Love; 12) Disappear; 13) Beat a Drum; 14) I've Been High; 15) I'll Take the Rain; 16) Sad Professor

The iconic Unplugged gigs, unedited. Cosy and acoustic, with the decade's difference creating a wide enough gap for both concerts to have a unique vibe. They were made for this format.

Key tracks: It's hard to choose particular songs given the general solid nature of both sets, so just to set the general gist here's the openers of both nights: "Half a World Away", and "All the Way to Reno".

R.E.M. were one of the few artists who took part in MTV's iconic Unplugged series more than once, and while the two sessions were only a decade apart they couldn't have taken place during more different times for the band. In 1991 R.E.M. had just become one of alternative rock's biggest names with their breakthrough album Out of Time featuring a notably acoustic bent, and so the Unplugged venue was a natural fit for the band to play through their recent hits and a selection of popular back catalogue favourites. Ten years later, their sound had turned studio-heavy and characterised by keyboards, programmed parts and synthesized effects. This time around R.E.M. found themselves having to reinvent songs from scratch to match the unplugged format, re-imagining the arrangements to an entirely different set of instruments as they opted for a set list dominated by deep cuts. There's a single shared song across the two sets - "Losing My Religion", obviously and deservedly - but otherwise the two evenings were completely unique from one another, and would likely have been close to such even with further repeat inclusions due to context alone. Unplugged 1991 & 2001: The Complete Sessions brings both performances together for the first time, and it's the first essential release of the band's post-retirement archive clear-out.

Out of the two, the 1991 concert is the more intimate one - or perhaps cosy is the better word here. The atmosphere is closer to a group of friends spending an evening playing together rather than a group of recent hitmakers performing a concert to strangers. The mood is jovial throughout: upbeat singalongs like "Get Up", "Pop Song 89" and "It's the End of the World" are all over the set, you've got charming curios such as the goofy instrumental "Rotary Eleven" and Mike Mills singing the naturally cheesy "Love Is All Around", "Radio Song" gets a lounge groove makeover, and other such jolly moments. That same closeness also benefits the somber moments of the session and many of them, such as "Half a World Away" and "Perfect Circle", get standout performances where already great songs sound drop-dead gorgeous. One of the core tenets of MTV Unplugged was to bring the artists closer to their fans not just by stripping down the sound but also in physical proximity, and the warm and inviting nature of the 1991 session is a great example of it in action.

In contrast, the general vibe of the 2001 performance is a little closer to that of a band standing in front of an audience: everyone's a little less chatty and there's no whimsical curios this time, and instead the outing is a little more seriously focused on the music alone. But then, the songs themselves aren't as natural a fit for the format. The bulk of the 2001 concert is taken from Up and Reveal, whose studio layers have not just been peeled off but often re-interpreted entirely: Stipe prefaces "I've Been High" by calling it "unabated", before the band move onto reinventing the synth-heavy original into an acoustic ballad. "I've Been High" bears the most radical change of the lot but many of the songs still bear a stark bareness to the studio materials - often bringing something new to the table for them, and always successfully. The innate beauty of the Up cuts get a chance to stand out loud when the electronic noise is left home, and the Reveal songs bridge across time to demonstrate their shared genes with the 1991 songs. The set list choices outside those two albums are rather tastefully chosen as well, and e.g. "Find the River" and "Cuyahoga" are such perfect fits for this format. The latter in particular just further drills it in how it's one of the great hidden gems of the band's back catalogue, and playing it softer removes none of its melodic brilliance. 

Both concerts are stand-out performances if we are honest, and neither is clearly better than the other either (though if we had to pick, I'd probably go for the feel-good first disc over the more professional seriousness of the second). Despite the shared concept, both have their individual strengths and obviously individual songs, and they're both brilliantly executed: the song selections leave nothing wanting, the band's live strength is up high both times and the new arrangements are often lovely. Binding the two sessions together like this is great, and not only for the convenience factor. Part of this set's charm is not just in hearing the subtle differences between the two sets, but also picking out the similarities. When the vastly different material is brought together under the same sonic umbrella, it really brings into light the core R.E.M. sound they all share despite the years between them. No matter how far they strayed away from a more acoustic-oriented style on record, their style of songwriting consistently moulds into that form well. What arguably helps is that both sets also feature a number of helping hands on stage, bringing the sound into further life: it's not quite as stripped down as you'd think, but it's arguably better this way as it gives the alternative arrangements a chance to shine better as it allows for the important musical details to still come through.

Being able to keep the richness of the sound helped in how successfully the band adapted to the format, which in turn surely played a part in them getting invited twice to the show. In fact, their mastery of it is the reason both of these sets have become classic chapters of MTV Unplugged history. Bringing the recordings out from the murky world of bootlegging has helped to canonise their landmark nature: even in the greater live R.E.M. discography alone this release stands out, and even more so in the extremely hit and miss Unplugged live album discography. As someone who did have those bootlegs for many years, having it officially here has only enhanced the seemingly endless replayability of them: when bound together, despite their differences the two gigs work as a really good whole and it's rare that I'll only ever listen to just one of the two anymore. Of all the R.E.M. live releases the Unplugged sets are arguably closest to the token Famous Live Recording for the world outside the main fanbase, and I find it hard to really disagree either: it certainly feels like the most essential R.E.M. live album to own.

Rating: 8/10

Manic Street Preachers - Gold Against the Soul (1993)

1) Sleepflower; 2) From Despair to Where; 3) La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh); 4) Yourself; 5) Life Becoming a Landslide; 6) Drug Drug Druggy; 7) Roses in the Hospital; 8) Nostalgic Pushead; 9) Symphony of Tourette; 10) Gold Against the Soul

Concise, determined and muscular - the showcase for a band who want to be taken seriously, even if there's a coin flip element to whether they land an arena classic or an eccentric hard rock cut.

Key tracks: "Sleepflower", "From Despair to Where", "La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)"

The great Manics tradition of each album being a reaction to the last starts here, right from their second album. Generation Terrorists was the kind of record you could only pull off once successfully, especially after the band's loud brags about selling millions of copies of it and splitting immediately, and so Gold Against the Soul represented a quick rebirth after the band had barely spent time in their initial incarnation, going against the excess and rowdiness of Generation Terrorists. It's a solid ten songs instead of sprawling 18, the make-up and glam are gone and everyone's wearing their best dour rock and roll wear, and the attention-craving political one-liners have been replaced by a more personal, thoughtful lyrical touch - and Moore is playing real drums now. The playtime was over and the Manics wanted to show they were a band worth taking seriously.

For that, the band stepped up a notch, each in their own way. Wire and Edwards' lyrics tackle a wider range of subjects and they start showing their actual talents here, with a finer attention towards the lyrical narratives as a whole rather than just a string of snappy pull quotes. The musical arrangements are more detailed and the production has been polished, and the future Manics staple of a string section accompaniment appearing in a select handful of songs. Above all, it rocks. Gold Against the Soul features a more muscular form of Manics, all hard riffs and extended guitar riffs, with James Dean Bradfield bellowing and steamrolling through the lyrics he's been handed. The band have never been shy about being comfortable with the idea of performing to masses of people in giant stages, and Gold Against the Soul goes all-in in its arena ambitions, and in the process stars showing off far more of the later Manics' DNA in its songs than its predecessor did. It's a little like a talent showcase for the band's capabilities that only occasionally showed up on Generation Terrorists, and much of the album is coloured by the Manics' desire to show that there's more to them than glitter, spray paint and headline-hogging antics. The thing is, sometimes you can dial all that up a little too much and sometimes they can go so against the grain of their previous album that the desire to show change ends up coming across a little cartoonish in its own way.

So, Gold Against the Soul ends up being a little split-natured. For one half of the album it's a blueprint for what's to come for the remainder of the band's 1990s and is the type of stadium rock and roll celebration that history has shown comes the most naturally for them, and all the album's most famous songs come from that vein. But then, for the other half of the album, the band use that same bag of tricks for off-kilter songs where the band fire off in unexpected directions amidst their growing pains. On one hand you have songs like e.g. "From Despair to Where" and "La Tristesse Durera", both which effectively introduce all the band's signature elements together into a singular unit for the first time and sound timeless and classy as a result. But there's a sizable difference between them and the more atypical cuts like the sarcastic hard rock theatre of "Nostalgic Pushead" and the very, very po-faced and aggressive "Symphony of Tourette" and "Yourself", which sound like the glam rocker of the debut album got hit by the early 90s wave of transatlantic alternative rock angst. As compositions go, the latter category are largely very solid, apart from the rather  one-dimensional "Drug Drug Druggy" which chugs along pleasantly but shoots itself in the foot with its clunky chorus (the best thing about is the nonsensical alphabet lesson that closes the song). In particular "Nostalgic Pushead" is simply too entertaining not to love as the comedically theatrical side of Manics gets one of its rare appearances, and James sounds like he's having a ball channeling the coke-driven spirit of a washed-out rock superstar. But then, contrast it with the orchestrally accentuated Britrock swells of e.g. "From Despair to Where" and it's like listening to same band but across two different timelines.

While the aloof side of the album is great in its own way ("Yourself" and "Symphony of Tourette" may be unintentionally silly but they are catchy as anything), the real glory does lie in its singles run - this is one of the few instances where all four of the album's singles were the absolutely correct choices and each of them is a major or minor classic in the band's catalogue. The aforementioned "From Despair to Where" and "La Tristesse Durera" are the album's golden children, the latter especially so: the bass-driven build-up with James' falsetto effectively rearing its head leads way into a simply sublime anthem with one of Bradfield's signature riffs and a triumphantly brilliant climax (and the simple moment where the song bursts into its full volume after its first chorus has never lost its shine). The gloriously strolling "Roses in the Hospital" injects a bittersweet ray of sunshine into the album with its bouncy arrangement and jovial surface mood (particularly with James' ad-libbing towards its end), but its lyrics start foreshadowing the more intense self-reflection the band would go to take on the next album. Finally, "Life Becoming a Landslide" puts together the album's gentler and rawer sides as it alternates between its head-banger riffs and torchlight anthem choruses. All four songs are showcases for a band who have consciously and intentionally taken great stride in leveling up and are now showing their work, and the boxes that Generation Terrorists' "Motorcycle Emptiness" nodded at are now starting to get ticked full-time.

Special mention also goes to the album's bookends, which are the closest the album gets to a bridge between its zig-zagging nature. "Sleepflower" is a beast of a song and a somewhat of a grown-up version of the band's prior intentionally over-the-top nature. It's clear there was a want to make an explosive opener to show what's changed right from the get-go and they decided to go all-in with it: the extended breakdown that goes from moody church bells to a dueling guitar solo across a couple of minutes of runtime is one of the most deliriously powerful musical histrionics this band has ever done. But, they still stuff a really good song around those theatrics and it's one of Manics' straightforwardly strongest honest rock anthems. Meanwhile the closing title track covers itself in various filters and layers like its fistpump-ready hooks are playing hide and seek: but beneath those effects it has real fire and lightning in its gut, with some of James' best pure guitar riffage intermingling with genuine political rage in its lyrics, which are a long mile away from the sloganeering nature of the debut. The soaring chorus is both angry and liberated, James spitting out lines like venom while acknowledging that musically, this is where the jubilant fireworks will go off.

In terms of pure rock powerhouse performance, Gold Against the Soul is one of Manics' strongest - so it's perhaps surprising that despite its iconic singles, it has a somewhat muted reception among the general populace and the majority of fans (and the band but that's like 80% of their discography for them). But look at it from another angle: it's perhaps equally surprising that you could have those four readily-formed hit singles here when so much of the album feels like it's going towards a different direction. It's not a cohesive record at all - but it is consistent. Generation Terrorists already proved that even when they were at their prime messiness, the band could already write a heck of a song despite of it. With Gold Against the Soul, there are so many genuine leaps forward in the overall ideas and performance that most everything here is genuinely very good, and it doesn't have to rely on pure charisma now and then like its predecessor did. Or to put it differently, this is one occasion where the band were true to their word: they wanted to be taken seriously and sure enough, this is the album where they became a serious band with real ambitions. It results in a genuinely great record, even if occasionally unfocused.

Rating: 8/10