William Shatner - Has Been (2004)

1) Common People; 2) It Hasn’t Happened Yet; 3) You’ll Have Time; 4) That’s Me Trying; 5) What Have You Done; 6) Together; 7) Familiar Love; 8) Ideal Woman; 9) Has Been; 10) I Can’t Get Behind That; 11) Real

With the help of Ben Folds and friends, the former space captain returns down to earth and shows a warm and genuine side usually buried behind his act. A more meaningful record than you’d think.

Key tracks: "It Hasn't Happened Yet", "That's Me Trying", "Real"

A real William Shatner historian could help to fill in the gaps on the man, the myth and the legend and how we got from Star Trek to recording an album with Ben Folds in the mid-aughts, but here's what we common men know. One, whilst not a musician Shatner has been able to add "iconic music star" into his CV thanks to his cult-favourite late-sixties spoken word album and later quirks like the famous "Rocket Man" performance. Two, Shatner had struck a friendship with Folds in the late 90s following Folds securing a guest feature from him for his Fear of Pop project. Three, by the 2000s Shatner had started to openly embrace William Shatner the Character: the hammy, perpetually scenery-chewing Hollywood weirdo whose real fame was in the past and who was now mostly known for increasingly strange guest spots, each building up the reputation of the act. And finally, four - when Folds and Shatner seized the opportunity to write an album together, both men had too much respect for one another to devote an album for that character.

That's what catches people by surprise when others mention Has Been as a genuine recommendation. It's not a comedy album starring a cheesy, hammy actor making fun of his own status; Shatner does ham it up and there is some cheese to it, but only to the extent that naturally occurs with Shatner anyway, he never goes out of his way to emphasise either area here. All but three of the lyrics are written by Shatner himself and take form of various spoken word and poetry pieces ruminating on life, legacy, loved ones and age - just as often funny as it can be surprisingly somber and thoughtful. Has Been has heart, and it feels like Shatner took the rare opportunity to genuinely be himself for once.

A lot of the strength of Has Been is down to Shatner, who’s genuinely a great performer even if it gets hidden away by his act, and in particular he knows how to deliver a line - to absorb the meaning of a lyric or a verse and then read it out in the most pitch-perfectly effective way to push that meaning through. Has Been isn’t a serious album but it’s grounded enough into reality that Shatner gets the room to take his craft seriously, whether it’s a punch-line filled rant about modern day pet peeves, enthusiastically declaring his love for those close to him or solemnly narrating his experience of discovering his wife drowned in a pool. Shatner and Folds mention in the liner notes that the idea was to give Shatner a way to say things he had rarely been able to speak out loud, and Shatner takes the opportunity to be frank about his experiences, and to approach making an album seriously rather as an extension of his past dabbling in the art form. Sometimes he wants to make you reflect on his words, other times to raise a smile on your face, but the one constant is that Shatner narrates it in the absolutely best way: from the way he stresses syllables to how he runs past some lines and spends a long while in another, he’s a tried and true storyteller. Now he’s telling stories that star him, rather than a character he plays.

It wouldn’t work as well as it does without a solid musical backing, and for that we have to thank Folds as the executive producer. Has Been is all over the place but brought together by Folds’ guiding hand, so the easy listening mid-tempos, tender ballads, hints of gospel and country, blazing rock ‘n’ roll and others all play along well. Folds brings in a veritable amount of guest stars to the studio (Aimee Mann, Brad Paisley, Matt Chamberlain, Joe Jackson, Lemon Jelly...) but no one is there to hog the spotlight from Shatner. The talent of the backing crew means that Has Been is great as a musical artifact as well. The contemplative mid-tempos suit the more po-faced Shatner the best and they’re frontloaded to the album as if to prove a point (“It Hasn’t Happened Yet”, “That’s Me Trying”) and they’re wonderful, touching pieces. The various little style experiments have a fairly universal success rate, in particular the love-lorn doo wop of "Familiar Love". “Together” is a mild sonically whiplash as it takes Shatner on a tour of mid-00s indietronica, all acoustic guitars and skittering beats, but it provides a meditative background for one of the more blissful lyrics of the album. I also love the sudden cowboy twang towards the end of the album, with the comical and ludicrously catchy title track (with an absolutely perfect intonation in Shatner’s voice on the song’s closing lyric that completely flips the mood), and the Paisley-written torchlight anthem “Real” which ends up being the album’s real theme from a lyrical perspective.

There is also, inexplicably, a cover of Pulp’s “Common People”, which has no relation to the rest of the album, isn’t explained in the liner notes and feels like a bait-and-switch hook, given it has no real connection to the rest of the album’s themes. I don’t know if it’s because Shatner really wanted to cover it, they thought they needed a catchy familiar single, if it was Folds’ whim or what, but if it didn’t cold open the album it’d stick out more than it does now. And I feel like I’m being too harsh on it by questioning its existence because it’s actually a really good cover. The party-thrashing rock-riffing form somewhat undermines the original song’s meaning but by the time it rolls onto the rant section, Shatner’s intonation at least makes it clear he gets the song - and as a sucker for big backing vocals, the inclusion of a recorded concert audience providing an impromptu choir for Shatner and duet partner Joe Jackson gets my points regardless. I’ve seen people pass on the album simply because of the cover, because to them it implies the full album is Shatner riffing on popular hits in his post-ironic fashion, so it does a bad job of selling the album as its most popular cut from it - but I still admit to really rather enjoying it regardless.

If there’s one other thing to account for the actual quality of this, it’s the fact that I don’t actually really care about Shatner in the first place. I enjoy Star Trek to an extent but have no strong feelings about the original run, and as a non-American I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot of the pop culture fascination that follows him simply due to lack of exposure. It doesn’t matter with Has Been because of how well it has been executed from a pure songwriting and production perspective, and to its credit it's done more to help me understand why people hold Shatner to some reputation than so much of other media. It’s Shatner’s gravitas and personality, channeled through his powerful performance, which rises above alll regardless - in a world full of celebrity vanity musical projects, this stands out as something that could only ever have come from him and has a reason to exist. For a man who’s most famous for being the captain of a spaceship, Has Been is one of the most down to earth and human records in my collection.

Rating: 8/10

Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy (2001)

1) Found That Soul; 2) Ocean Spray; 3) Intravenous Agnostic; 4) So Why So Sad; 5) Let Robeson Sing; 6) The Year of Purification; 7) Wattsville Blues; 8) Miss Europa Disco Dancer; 9) Dead Martyrs; 10) His Last Painting; 11) My Guernica; 12) The Convalescent; 13) Epicentre; 14) Royal Correspondent; 15) Baby Elián; 16) Freedom of Speech Won't Feed My Children; 17) We're All Bourgeois Now [hidden track]

Untamed, chaotic, intentional crash into a brick wall - far away from the polished rock anthems of the hit albums before it. And it's fantastic.

Key tracks: Ocean Spray, Intravenous Agnostic, Wattsville Blues

After the two hit album streak of 1996's orchestral Everything Must Go and 1998's introspective and melancholy This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, Manic Street Preachers had reached the success they had always wanted, and they were miserable. Their rise in popularity and streak of radio hit singles had turned them into the flavour of the month, the band finding themselves disconnected from their own art as their increasingly sizeable concert venues became filled with people who only knew the hits. They had started their career with overshot ambitions of millions of record sales and now that they had done it, typically for the band, they started to react against it. The New Years 2000 stand-alone single "The Masses Against the Classes", released to welcome in the new millennium as an indication of things to come, showcased the band in a more furious, energetic and rawer form than they had been in years. Afterwards, the band retreated to Spain in isolation from the British music press and began to work on the album that they deemed their intentional self-destruction. Rather than craft elaborate anthems in the studio over a few months, all songs were written, performed and recorded quickly to allow for intuition to take lead and to welcome any idea no matter what it was - no more than three practice runs were allowed before recording the song with as few takes as possible. The initial intention was to revive their old punk roots but as the band stopped censoring themselves, any single idea that came to mind was deemed worthy of recording; everything under the sun was thrown around, produced to different degrees of polish (or not) and sometimes mixed together in form of creative chaos.

The initial plan was to release absolutely everything they recorded, either in the form of a double album or two different albums Use Your Illusion style, but what eventually formed out of the sessions was Know Your Enemy. 16 songs and one hidden track, shifting from quickfire punk rockers to pristinely produced Beach Boys pastiches, from ramshackle acoustic ballads to drum-machine driven weariness, from spoken word angst to disco. The c-part of a song left out of the album was cut and included as a mid-album hidden interlude. The bassist who had never sung lead before does his debut while the frontman who had never written a lyric in the band's entire career finally gets the courage to do so. Even Wire himself, as the band’s regular lyricist, zips back and forth between the introspection and melancholy of the past two albums, clumsy but direct political stabs and plain word salad. The running order of the songs has no reason or rhyme and could just as well have been shuffled. To represent this, the band released two lead singles simultaneously that couldn’t have been any further from one another if they tried: on one hand you had the raging guitars of “Found That Soul”, the other hand held the summertime pop anthem “So Why So Sad”. The launch concert was held in Cuba long before Rolling Stones made the headlines doing the same, away from the band's regular touring routes (and was attended by Fidel Castro to boot).

Know Your Enemy does not make sense nor does it intend to: the obligatory quote the band picked to represent the album in the liner notes is Susan Sontag’s “The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions”. It's a gigantic, schizophrenic pandemonium of ideas and directions pulling in all directions. It was intended to confuse, to throw a spanner in the works and to raze the field to ashes to find out what would grow afterwards. The critics were baffled, while creating alternative track lists to make more sense out of it became a popular fan hobby. Everyone agreed it was a mess. And all that is why it’s brilliant.

Know Your Enemy is not quite as chaotic as it seems at first glance. Amidst the rampart disorder and initial sense of directionlessness, you can find an identifiable core for Know Your Enemy in its scruffy, rough-round-the-edges rockers and world-weary pop songs: the flip sides of the band’s rage against their own internal conflicting instincts, both the loud defiance and restless confusion. "Ocean Spray" right at the start is like a direct exhibition: driven forward by rambling acoustics guitar and drowned out loud by their electric counterparts in the fuzzed-out chorus, it’s musically a microcosm of the album brought within four minutes. It’s also where Bradfield has penned his own lyrics, dictating his own anecdotal lyrics about his mother’s battle with cancer, letting the crashing of the guitars vent out the frustration and sadness in the breakdowns. A mournful trumpet replaces the traditional guitar solo, Sean Moore showing his skills by playing its solemn melody. It’s the closest the album gets to what could constitute a traditionally classic Manics song, just morphed into a new form.

If Manics had pinned this particular direction down as the focal point of the album, we could be talking about different kind of a classic record in the band’s repertoire: one that merges the developed talent in melody and arrangement shown throughout the past two albums with a rawer, more grounded sensibility. The jangly "The Year of Purification" takes its inspiration from the IRS-era R.E.M. and hides its angry political lashing out in the sweetest and brightest of melodies. "His Last Painting" goes through its three minutes simplistically and without much change, looping its core melody and structure in a Groundhog’s Day fashion before finally tearing itself apart and fading away instrument by instrument. The pounding "Epicentre" continues with the band’s growing intuition for piano-lead songs, but this time treating the instrument like the stabbing riffs of a guitar with clanging, punched notes, only moving to the elegant later on just in time for the band to flip the song into something as close as this album gets to an anthem by its end. "Let Robeson Sing" takes the guise of a sunny gospel song, relishing in its harmonies and backing vocals. For an album that was meant to be disruptive and guided by whim rather than careful consideration, Know Your Enemy at times acts like a celebration of brightly lush melodies, either because Bradfield is a natural with them or the quick turnaround forced his hand to put them right in the center rather than arranging something more elaborate around them.

Half the time these tendencies manifest into thundering rock songs, throwing back to the initial concept of the record and primarily dominated by James shouting down the mic and raising a storm with his guitars. The co-lead single "Found That Soul" opens the album with a storming three-minute guitar blast and frantic one-note rock ‘n’ roll piano hammering that never stops for a breath. The lyrics of "Intravenous Agnostic" do not even try to make sense but its downright neurotic drive, including one of Bradfield's more insane solo moments, shows the album at its most unhinged - and its mad rush of energy is one of the band’s most downright giddy displays of guitar rock glory. Both "Dead Martyrs" and "My Guernica" take a more unpolished approach, filtered like they're recorded through a phone, which suits their loud and proud nature perfectly. The epic centrepiece and culmination of everything is the six-minute "The Convalescent" which goes from 0 to 100 instantly and packs within it all the intensity, the mania, the conflict and the relentless attitude the recording process was characterised by, intentionally or not. The lyric is close to a stream-of-consciousness rant, lead by Wire’s growing frustration while literally describing his bedroom to excruciating detail and Bradfield tapping onto the emotion it intends to convey, and eventually the song climaxes into a fervourous blaze of wordless vocals growing more anxious with the instruments winding tighter and tighter: the whole song feels like it’s on fire and going out of control.

You can trace a common thread between all of these songs and they would comfortably create a somewhat cohesive - if still an untamed - collection of songs, but Know Your Enemy really gets its reputation as a troublemaker by its weirder side. Know Your Enemy is one of the most experimental Manics albums, not necessarily in the way we normally come to associate that term with, but in the sheer guts that they've actually placed these songs on the record. Normally the stylistic trials and quirkier ideas would either get relegated as b-sides or self-censored into creative oblivion, but Know Your Enemy lets the wilder side of Manics shine out in the open. "So Why So Sad" is pure sunshine pop with Beach Boys backing vocals (not the least of which are the constant ‘ba ba ba’s), so crammed with production gimmicks and keyboards that you can barely hear Bradfield’s guitar under them and a synthesiser solo to top it all off. Wire, whose rough and gruff voice had already seen increased backing vocal appearances throughout the album becomes the frontman on the murky "Wattsville Blues”, spitting hatred and apathy ("life is killing me", "don't want no fuckin' friends", "useless motherfuckers knocking at my door", etc) over an increasingly frantic drum machine before the bouncy, funky chorus jumps out of nowhere and Bradfield takes the lead vocal briefly while Wire gets increasingly aggressive about it. "Miss Europa Disco Dancer", like the title suggests, goes full-on honest disco with no trace of rock creeping in: glimmering keyboards, funky bass, disco guitar and starry-eyed glamour fill the space as the band who you’d never ever imagine doing this suddenly have the time of their lives, only for Wire to appear again at the end of the track and lead the song to its fadeaway end with an expletive-filled chant.

It’s brilliant though. These shouldn’t work, but they do because they have that creative insanity to them and most importantly the pure and complete devotion behind them. It’s the normally (by this point) somewhat stiff-back band paying zero mind to anyone but their own whims and throwing themselves in on any wild idea, and that wild abandon sounds so fresh and fun - “Wattsville Blues” and “Miss Europa Disco Dancer” is one of the strongest one-two punches in the Manics catalogue in large because of the audacity of them; and beneath the shock and gasp of the sound, they’re rock solid songs. Same with “So Why So Sad”, possibly the most criminally underrated single of the band’s career, and same with any of the other songs where that experimental trait runs through even if not as blatantly, e.g. with the drum-programmed quiet fury of “Royal Correspondent”, the jangle pop of “The Year of Purification”, etc. When people use the expressions about throwing things in the wall to see if anything sticks, it’s rarely considered what happens when those things do actually stick; that’s exactly what happens with Know Your Enemy, where any idea - no matter how out there for the band in question - had enough skill and guts backed behind it for them to work.

At sixteen songs (17 if you count the cover of McCarthy’s “We’re All Bourgeois Now” hidden at the end of the album, pretty much identical to the original musically but with James belting over it) it’d be hard to argue that Know Your Enemy is flawless, and it certainly isn’t. The choruses of “Baby Elián” meander following the intricate groove of the much more arresting verses, “Freedom of Speech Won’t Feed My Children” has a lot of great ideas (any song with heavy usage of call-and-answer backing vocals will always have my vote) but feels a little like a b-side bonus track tacked at the end to bring the album to a quick halt (although it sort of works with the album’s general disjointed nature). Wire’s lyrics show a remarkable bitterness throughout the album and are just as often great as they are awkward, worst of all whenever he goes on a political kick and ends up being more clunky than observant. You could argue that some of the songs could have benefitted from a bit more polish or work. But the album hits the bullseye way too many times for any of its obvious downsides to really have any damaging effect. Know Your Enemy was meant to be a creative shake-up based on pure instinct and with the band riding their golden age strong still, those instincts produced something new and unique each time. For what’s supposed to be the great opinion divider and an act of self-immolation, the record behaves much more like an ode to the creative spark driving the band at the time - no matter what they would do, it’d be a success, and just because it’s less polished than its hit-making predecessors, it only shows that the band didn’t need the fancy studio environment and added instrumentation to create something.

Still, it did what it was set out to do. None of its singles became perennial favourites in the way the previous albums’ choices had, the spotlight started to grow smaller and any of the expectations anyone had for the band were cleared out or reassessed. The Manics being the Manics, they started to doubt their own instincts from the moment the record was released; almost half the album was ignored on the very tour for the record (and they haven’t made much of an appearance since either) and the band was trying their best to not be too dismissive about it from the get-go: while the idea behind recording the album was a great big ‘screw you’ to everyone, the band were much more meek and mild about the whole affair the instant it was out. The band intentionally set out to create a giant mess, with no intention to pay attention to it afterwards until the damage was already done.

But it’s an incredible mess. My overall preference when it comes to albums is that cohesion is king, that records are thematic entities and the songs should be in support of the whole. The lesson of Know Your Enemy is that being all over the place can form its own kind of creative unit when there’s an intent behind it. Through embracing their first thoughts and not censoring themselves, giving themselves the right to do absolutely whatever that came to mind, the Manics created this sprawling, unorganised, rugged rock record that would be confusing if it wasn’t so well-written and infectiously good throughout its length. The Manics are always at their best when they lock out of the rest of the world from their studio work - Know Your Enemy is a grand, thoroughly exciting example of that.

There were a good several years of my teens when the Manics meant to me more than any other musical act. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours had opened my mind to music beyond what I had accustomed to and Everything Must Go, purchased a bit thereafter, taught me that I should keep it in my mind to hear more from this band. Know Your Enemy in its own special way turned me into the obsessed fanboy, fervently studying its details with my DiscMan next to me and the (now very time-worn) liner notes booklet in one hand. I’m normally innocently oblivious to how people can not see the strengths of the records I love but this is a case where it’s absolutely obvious why this could split opinions - and I unabashedly, obsessively love this chaotic act of a band tearing itself apart and seeing what they can form out of the scraps.

Rating: 9/10

Midlake - Bamnan and Slivercork (2004)

1) They Cannot Let It Expand; 2) Balloon Maker; 3) Kingfish Pies; 4) I Guess I'll Take Care; 5) Some of Them Were Superstitious; 6) The Reprimand; 7) The Jungler; 8) He Tried to Escape; 9) Mopper's Medley; 10) No One Knew Where We Were; 11) Anabel; 12) Mr. Amateur

A rock album molded into a dreamlike ramble through gorgeous, crackling synthesizers. One of a kind, even within the band's own catalogue.

Key tracks: "Balloon Maker", "Some of Them Were Superstitious", "No One Knew Where We Were"

There are two aspects to Bamnan and Slivercork that I instantly associate with the album when asked to describe it, and one of them is the world that the record creates. Midlake have a knack for creating little pocket universes with their records in a way that seems completely accidental, where separate threads form a web that could - if you squint a little - create a conceptual whole. Bamnan and Slivercork wasn't intended to be a concept album of any kind, but thanks to the ever-so-slightly off-kilter lean it has in its presentation, performance and writing, it inadvertently creates something that could be. The nonsensical name, the visual presentation from the strangely arresting cover to the surreal videos and the dream-like lyrics collaborate to build a coherent reality out of the balloon makers, one-armed scientists, ominous monocle men (which the cover depicts), love-lorn janitors, bird suit wearing swordsmen and murdered lovers who share their rambling dream-like story vignettes song by song; stories that seem real but don’t quite belong to our reality. Midlake would really tap into that skill of make-believe concept albums with the rural lore of The Trials of Van Occupanther, but it's already so present on their debut that it's one of its most tangible characteristics; despite not even being officially classed as one, it sounds more like a story album than most concept albums do. You then pay more attention to the music because of the words that accompany them, and vice versa, and they both play off against eachother's traits.

From the very beginning, Midlake have been a restless band who never quite found a slot they felt they belonged in. They were jazz musicians first, who then wanted to go rock; by their debut album they had already gone through a number of line-up changes and style shifts. That restlessness feeds into the sound of Bamnan and Slivercork, recorded way before frontman Tim Smith’s rigid perfectionism started to shape the band. Nominally the album slots comfortably into the millennial US indie canon but the extended instrumental passages bridging the verses and choruses hint at wider inspiration points, the shuffling liveliness of the drums so in contrast with the rest of the instrumentation nods at the original jazz influences, and the whole album feels like it’s been rearranged for a different band from the who wrote the songs. It's got one foot in rock band dynamics, another one in psychedelic sound textures, and it's played by people who are freely mixing up all their influences together in wild abandon. It’s album’s other key aspect and its arguable signature element which brings it all together: the synthesizers.

The best thing about the preceding Milkmaid Grand Army EP were the fuzzy synthesizers that were used to a distinguishable degree, with their instantly recognisable signature tones breathing a different kind of life to the Radiohead-esque guitar sound the EP had. On Bamnan and Slivercork those synths have been turned into the de facto lead instrument. The guitars are little more than a flavouring or a rhythmic accompaniment, with the synths taking charge as the key melodic and textural elements; the only things sharing space to an equal degree with them are Tim Smith's wispy voice and the lively drums that lock into vibrant grooves. The warm synthetic sounds crackle, bleep and fuzz all over the twelve songs and for many songs they're the stars that deliver the hooks and capture the imagination, whether they're all out there like the pitch-shifting robo-voice melody of “He Tried to Escape” or the more tasteful atmospheric electronic wallpaper that drapes over the instrumental passages of “No One Knew Where We Were”. They’re gorgeous and unique textures, and the usage of these instruments on Bamnan and Slivercork is not just masterful, but integral to the record; above and beyond the usual "indie bands do synths" trope we've heard a thousand times by now. If the pseudo-conceptual nature of the album is what inspires the listener to dig deep into it, it's the synths that pull you to take the shovel in your hand.

The overall aesthetics and themes of the album are clearly the most identifiable elements of Bamnan and Slivercork when assessing it, but the actual songs are far from being secondary to everything else. Bamnan and Slivercork operates differently to its more famous siblings but from a pure songwriting perspective, it's among the strongest set of songs in the band's catalogue. The busy, swirling “Balloon Maker” is a quintessential Midlake classic, riding a marching beat and a set of horns across its synth-laden dreamscape, and rising above its meager beginnings in the chorus full of bittersweetness and yearning. “No One Knew Where We Were”, "Kingfish Pies" and “Mopper’s Medley” have a shuffle underneath their feet and a bounce in their heart, with Midlake operating as a tight interplaying unit of musicians in a way that the more rigid later albums would shy away from; they're downright exuberant in their swinging and grooving. “I Guess I’ll Take Care” and “He Tried to Escape” are mid-tempo heaven, their signature synth sounds carrying them forward high and mighty, Smith's voice showing just how effective his particular soft tone is for harmonising quiet melancholy and desperation. And you know an album is great when even the slow-burner intro and the interlude are stand-outs in their own way - especially the latter, the instrumental "The Reprimand" which is a short ode to the album's synthesizers and has a lot more longevity than you'd expect.

The closing duo of short, end credits roll themes of "Anabel" and "Mr. Amateur" bring the album to a quiet, contemplative closure and it feels appropriate as the strange stories of Bamnan and Slivercork come to an end. It's a singular journey of an album, with hints of other ideas and inspirations but brought together uniquely, not least because the band themselves hold such a wide range of instrumental styles that play with eachother so well here - and with the way and the rejigged sound that the band would take off with shortly after this, that notion of this being a one-of-a-kind deal is reinforced even further. Bamnan and Slivercork is above all a set of great songs, even if that aspect might have been downplayed when talking about its other traits, but those other aspects really raise it above ground, coaxing you to keep revisiting the world that Midlake have created just for this one album.

And I just really love those synths.

Rating: 9/10

Midlake - Milkmaid Grand Army EP (2001)

1) She Removes Her Spiral Hair; 2) Paper Gown; 3) Excited But Not Enough; 4) I Lost My Bodyweight in the Forest; 5) Simple; 6) Roller Skate (Farewell June); 7) Golden Hour

Debut EPs rarely fully showcase what the artist in question would turn out to be like, but if you want to hear Midlake having a bit of an alt rock crunch to them, here's the only place you'll get a chance to.

Key tracks: "She Removes Her Spiral Hair", "Roller Skate (Farewell June)"

There's a fair few years between Midlake's first EP and their first album, and an even longer gap towards their breakthrough album The Trials of Van Occupanther and the arrival of what could be considered their signature sound. During those years Midlake were moving from sound to sound in search of something they could call their own. That Milkmaid Grand Army EP doesn't really connect sonically to any other Midlake release isn't too unexpected given the time between it and everything else, but it's still surprising because it's just so off the beaten path for them. Way before the fuzzy synths or the pastoral folk rock, Midlake's greatest inspiration (by their own words) was OK Computer and the sullen British guitar rock of the late 90s, and that's what they wanted to replicate.

It's strange to hear Tim Smith's voice over such straightforwardly guitar-rocking cuts - a real alternate universe what-if experience -  and maybe it's better for their legacy that the band moved away from this sound pretty quickly, but hot damn they're actually good at it. "She Removes Her Spiral Hair", "Excited But Not Enough" and "Roller Skate" are a great combination of britrock hooks with US indie je ne sais quoi quirk: the guitars have a good crunch to them, they're backed by the gorgeous retro synthesizers the band would emphasise for their debut, and while atypically rocking for this band they make the sound and songs theirs. They're missing a lot of what would make Midlake great when they became all grown up, but in the place of those aspects these songs have their own strengths. "She Removes Her Spiral Hair" is close to top-tier Midlake overall, with its pounding drums, swooning chorus and excellent, detail-oriented arrangement - and the other two aren't too far, with "Excited But Not Enough" dialling up the rock band intensity and the upbeat "Roller Skate" frolicking on with an off-kilter sense of fun, handclaps and all. The only downside here is the awkward sound swithc in "Excited But Not Enough" close to its end, which honestly sounds like an editing error taking away the joint between the song's two clear segments. I honestly thought my copy had an error in it; it's the one part of the EP that's scruffy and wobbles with the first steps.

Excluding the brief and rather non-descript instrumental interlude "I Lost My Bodyweight in the Forest", the other three songs are a more familiar fare. "Paper Gown", "Simple" and "Golden Hour" are all moodier mid-tempo cuts, gently pacing forward in their weariness: they also edge closer to a more familiar Midlake sound and could be Bamnan and Slivercork outtakes if you squint your eyes a little. They're good songs, but a little one-note and samey - I still mix them up - and the alternation between them and the guitar-heavier songs mainly just serves to highlight the excitement of the other three songs, reducing the mid-tempo posse into extended bridges between them. "Paper Gown" is the best of the lot because it has a bit more life to it than the other two and in its overall arrangement resembles the distant cousin of the songs it's sandwiched between, but these aren't the songs that make this EP interesting for fans.

That said, filing Milkmaid Grand Army EP into the same just-for-fans drawer most debut EPs end up in is a little unkind. There's nothing rough in this and it only really looks like an awkward party crasher because it's so far removed in relation to how Midlake would actually eventually sound like (in any part of their transformation-full career). It's a fully realised vision, which could have easily acted as a launch pad for a different kind of career; Midlake simply chose to pursue other ideas. It's far from a hidden gem too but the songs for most parts stand up proudly; and I'd be delighted to hear more from the mirror universe version of Midlake who'd go on to move directly forward from here.

Rating: 7/10

Manic Street Preachers - This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours (1998)

1) The Everlasting; 2) If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next; 3) You Stole the Sun from My Heart; 4) Ready for Drowning; 5) Tsunami; 6) My Little Empire; 7) I'm Not Working; 8) You're Tender and You're Tired; 9) Born a Girl; 10) Be Natural; 11) Black Dog on My Shoulder; 12) Nobody Loved You; 13) S.Y.M.M.

Manics embrace introspectivity, go personal, lock up in the studio and explore new ways to craft songs. It's worlds apart from anything that came before but it's what everything has built up to so far. 

Key tracks: "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next", "Ready for Drowning", "Black Dog on My Shoulder"

In 1998, my ten-year-old self enjoyed music a whole load but only songs with a kicking beat and a high BPM count. Eurodance was the best thing in the world, current radio hit compilations were about the only albums I owned and the skip button was used heavily for any song that sounded sad or was, worst of all, slow. Then the wordily titled "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" appeared on TV and besides the slightly unsettling video and the mouthful of a title, what struck out the most was how spellbinding the song was even though it defied every single one of the established rules of Good Music I had. The song's melancholy penetrated through the language barrier but it sounded powerful and captivating, and its melody and songwriting were hypnotising even if next to the more comfortable high-energy dance cuts I was used to, it was practically a dirge. I don't want to be too embarrasingly personal or build up my own personal mythology too much, but sometimes you need to and with this album I absolutely must. "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours changed the way I viewed and listened to music, and it opened the world for me to discover aspects of music I would have automatically dismissed before - a few years later and it had started to shape my budding music collection, after I had fallen in love with the concept of moody guys with guitars. This is a defining record of my life, and probably the defining record, and I wanted to bring that up at this stage so that you can adjust your bias lenses accordingly regarding the rest of this ramble.

"If You Tolerate This" wasn't a typical Manic Street Preachers single, and as a follow-up to their chart-topper record it was a whiplash. All things considered the Manics should have felt triumphant after the wide-scale breakthrough of Everything Must Go given how they had always wanted to be a big rock band, and for a little while they did enjoy basking in the spotlight and reaping the rewards of their unexpected success. But massive highs tend to be followed by a comedown. Compared to its anthemic predecessor it took a completely different route, and in retrospect it's a surprise it found listeners in the same way - if anything, the hype train got even bigger as "If You Tolerate This" caused ripples across Europe and pushed the band further after conquering the UK the last time around. Following the stadium rock glory of Everything Must Go the Manics decided to unexpectedly move further inwards, retreating into an introspective space within the confinements of the studio where the band now had the means and the budget to do whatever they wanted. 

By this point Manics had been many things already - often bold, boisterous and loud - but never had they been so melancholy and so quiet as on This Is My Truth, and the main credit for that goes to Nicky Wire. Everything Must Go still featured some of his former co-lyricist Richey Edwards' words in a posthumous fashion, and so This Is My Truth was the first time Wire had to take on the responsibility of the band's lyrical (and by proxy, thematical) direction fully on top of his own shoulders. Everything Must Go had already introduced a more introspective, contemplative direction for Wire as without Edwards' mad creativity he struggled with his place in the band and the world, and found himself tuning onto those feelings in his lyrics. This Is My Truth became an extension for that direction. The band's former political lean became a sidetract, a side flavouring for the world where the center was Wire himself: still lost, still full of self-doubt and obsessed about ruminating on time, legacy and even identity.

It's with This Is My Truth where Wire really finds his own voice as a lyricist. As any fan can attest Wire has always been very fond of talking about himself, and while it's not in the way he probably intended, as a lyricist that's exactly where his strengths lie instead of his political aspirations. Wire has rarely opened up about any greater mental health issues of his, but he's a man frequently obsessed by his own past and who views the present day through that yearning nostalgia, and who then opens himself up to various insecurities and doubt while doing so. The likes of "This Is Yesterday" during the quartet years already hinted at this, but following Richey's disappearance that instict really took over and following the initial reflections on Everything Must Go, Wire's full lyrical debut on This Is My Truth was to open up on those feelings even further - and he finally takes the leap from an interesting lyricist to a great one. He's a contemplative writer who frequently sees the world around him as an extension of his own identity, and in his lyrics he frequently tries to reconcile the two, reflecting on himself and the context surrounding him in various degrees of uncertainty: by "Born a Girl" he's downright regretting his entire self. Bar the odd clunky simile he can't avoid, Wire's words have heft and resonance throughout and they're consistently great, which given how much of a fuss the band had made about their lyrics by this point does genuinely matter. The closing "S.Y.M.M." is the testament of Wire's skill on This Is My Truth: it's a song about trying to reflect on something so terrible that you can't put it into words and that writing a song about it is impossible (namely, the Hillsborough disaster), and the combination of the words and Bradfield's performance really sells the tragedy behind the quirky concept; and it leads to the simple, blunt chorus to sound like it's quietly holding back pure rage whenever it appears.

Rather than fight against the sadness like with the previous album, this time Bradfield and Moore - who would write to Wire's lyrics rather than the other way around - corresponded to it. This Is My Truth begins with the quiet drum machine countdown of "The Everlasting" and the song never quite explodes even if the strings start swelling dramatically by its end; it's a torchsong that refuses to become one and keeps chaining itself to the ground, sounding little more hopeless each time it does. It's a signifier of the change of pace, with songs averaging around 5-6 minutes, full of small but crucial sonic details and often advancing at a patient, slow pace. The band are treating the studio as an instrument of its own, and that means two things. One is a more layered sound, with far more guest instruments than before, always utilised to create something memorable and remarkable: signature elements such as the church organ of "Ready for Drowning", the ghostly electric sitar of "I'm Not Working" and the iconic distorted organ stab racing through "If You Tolerate This", and keyboards and pianos are now a regular part of the sound. When the band's signature string sections are present, they rarely rest still acting pretty: in particular the orchestral harmony of "Black Dog on My Shoulder" is, no contest, the finest appearance of strings in the Manics catalogue, as they swivel back and forth, crescendoing with the extended instrumental outro, surrounding the band with a majestically elegiac power. It makes an already classy song into something truly regal - among the deep sonics of the album it sounds the most rooted into the room you are in right now, and then the orchestral section elevates it into high heavens by its closing crescendo.

The other defining element of This Is My Truth is the use of space within the sound. This Is My Truth most often sounds like it's played in grand halls or churches, a giant sound reverberating within wide booming walls, each instrument and sound given a place to breathe despite the layers in arrangement. "I'm Not Working" takes this the most extreme, with the space being the defining element of the song as its sparse lead melodies float and echo into a forever, Bradfield's worn-out vocals existing for brief moments of time in the center of the universe the band are floating in. Most of the album doesn't quite go that far, but that vastness is used beautifully throughout: to create an intimate surrounding in the vulnerable and broken "Born a Girl" and the bitter and defeated "My Little Empire", to accentuate the majestic ascends of "Be Natural", or to twist the barely-in-control rage of "S.Y.M.M." into something otherworldly. This Is My Truth doesn't really show off with its production - despite the elements at play it's actually surprisingly down to earth in its fidelity - but its breathing space lends its melancholy a veneer of grace and beauty. Despite everything it's restful in its autumnal solitude, rather than dark and brooding.

The ability to grow the arrangements beyond the core of the band allows Bradfield to also really push forward with his melodic skills. Bradfield always was the musical centrepiece of the Manics: for most of the band's history he had been the man responsible for more or less every musical flourish while juggling how to perform the songs live where he had to pull most of the weight. On This Is My Truth he took the chance to explore other avenues, letting his talent for arrangement shine from one instrument to another, no longer wanting to rely fully on his guitar or leading each song onto the mandatory stand-off solo. A few times throughout the album he lets his own signature instrument fade away from spotlight nearly completely, such as on "I'm Not Working" where the guitar's sparse melodies barely act as the glue in the ether, and on the uncharacteristically delicate, piano-lead "You're Tender and You're Tired". His passion for each song having an iconic, distinct hook is still well alive but thanks to the new possibilities, former could-be straightforward anthems like "Be Natural" are taken to wholly new realms of possibilities sonically and quite frankly elevated: "Be Natural" was originally considered the album's lead single and its transformation of the traditional Manics anthem into something stargazing and dream-like would have been an effective statement of intent in its own right. Bradfield is clearly having a field day exploring new territories musically and it has a knock-on effect to his songwriting: he's bringing out a classic melody after another here, from each verse and chorus to any bridge, breakdown and extended outro (which he's still handing out abundantly like on Everything Must Go, but now in more varieties than just louder guitars) he can conjure

This Is My Truth still erupts in guitars from time to time and when it does, it feels more meaningful as the album's established sound world is shaken up. The liberated noise of Bradfield's guitars exploding is the catharsis for the slow-burning emotion elsewhere, allowing those feelings to burst out. "Ready for Drowning" and "Nobody Loved You" in particular act as the album's vital heartbeats - the former's walls of noise are the musical representation of the waves in the song's lyrical imagery, burying history underneath its sound, and "Nobody Loved You" starts the trend of now traditional token Richey songs with a wistful, dynamic purge of emotion dressed up as an arena anthem, a last tearjerking rage into the night. "You Stole the Sun from My Heart" and "Tsunami" on the other hand are the needed breaks from the rest of the album's tone: both in subject (one a disguised hate letter for extended touring, the other one of Wire's frequent lyrical biographies of whoever he's read about recently, this time The Silent Twins), as well as in sound with a more outwardly oriented direction. They're the nods to the audience that the band picked up with the last album, but tailored into a format that doesn't sound out of place or condescending: both, and especially the delicately presenting but slyly storming "Tsunami" that really showcases its muscular vibrancy by the time the band build it back up from the quiet middle eight, are among the band's best out-and-out rockers.

They are all incredible songs - full of resonance, melodic strength and detail in arrangement, each one with the potential to be breathtaking or the most vital thing in the existence when the world calls for it. I could write a paragraph on each (and I have elsewhere) if it wasn't unbearable to read through. But "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" is still above them all. It's a masterpiece of a song, with every second bringing something immortal: from the alien distorted organ sound swirling through it, to one iconic line after another (and the first verse alone is one hell of an opening segment which signals straightaway you're in for something grand), the hi-hat heavy beat shuffling through the song in a way that highlights the brilliance of Sean Moore as a drummer who knows the perfect beat to each song, and the organ of the chorus amping up the tender sadness of the song. Everything from about 2:30, when the second chorus ends, leaves me completely disarmed: the guitar solo, the greatest-of-all-time bridge, the last chorus full of desperation and defiance, the extended finale where James lets his wordless vocals race around the air because no words can be enough anymore. It never fails to give me chills down my back. It's probably my favourite song of all time? It certainly feels like no other song and has more importance than anything else, no matter how many times over the years I've heard it it always hits me in full force.

This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours is a special record. It transcends the standard ways I evaluate albums simply because it's become such an integral part of who I am as a person and as a music listener: it's the clear watermark between how I interacted music before it, and afterwards. It taught me things about myself and music as a phenomenon. It taught me that lyrics can matter, even when I could barely speak English; but I mimed those words without understanding what I meant, and piece by piece and word by word understanding what they stood for (and I have James to thank about how I continue pronounce "genuine"). It taught me that details matter, that tiny moments can bring forth great experiences within music. It taught me not everything hits at 100% immediately: unlocking This Is My Truth was a slow process because of my childhood hang-ups but the songs I balked at in the first instance later became close favourites. It is quite literally an album that has stood with me from the beginning of what I consider the start of me as a devoted music listener, and the only way I can judge it against anything else is by considering it as the high example of what I compare my other 10/10 albums against, that if something can come close to the visceral emotional resonance this has then it is a sign of something special.

For Manics too, it's become a pinnacle of their career. They would go on to do many amazing things since, some even coming so very close to this one that my old self had active debates on which I'd prefer, and in terms of pure style it's not something I would consider as the purest distillation of what Manics are about. But it's the moment where everything clicked together perfectly without any of the quirks and ifs and buts which always have a habit of appearing with this band; where the musicianship, the songwriting, the lyricism, the performance and the production all meet in perfect balance to create a cohesive, unified statement that's both a set of 13 incredible songs as well as an hour-long showcase for three musicians at the peak of their creative imperial phase. Introspectivity has always suited the Manics but they're often hesitant to acknowledge it because it often clashes with their instinctual desire for grand, anthemic heights: for once in their lifetime, they married the two sides together perfectly.

Rating: 10/10

The Smashing Pumpkins - MACHINA / The Machines of God (2000)

1) The Everlasting Gaze; 2) Raindrops + Sunshowers; 3) Stand Inside Your Love; 4) I of the Mourning; 5) The Sacred and Profane; 6) Try, Try, Try; 7) Heavy Metal Machine; 8) This Time; 9) The Imploding Voice; 10) Glass and the Ghost Children; 11) Wound; 12) The Crying Tree of Mercury; 13) With Every Light; 14) Blue Skies Bring Tears; 15) Age of Innocence

One last hurrah for the original Pumpkins run, and Corgan & co give it their everything. The culmination of everything the Pumpkins recorded in the 90s.

Key tracks: "The Everlasting Gaze", "I of the Mourning", "This Time"

In the beginning Machina/The Machines of God was to be The Smashing Pumpkins’ return to form. As brilliant as the synthesized and understated Adore was, it caused a huge dip in the band’s popularity when everyone who had bought into Billy Corgan’s crunchy teen angst riffs suddenly weren’t quite as keen on his gothic introspection. So, plans were made to kick back into the familiarly guitar-heavy territory, and not just that but to do it even more ambitiously than ever before. Freshly cleaned up Jimmy Chamberlain was invited back into the band to replace the drum machines with his machine-strength drumming. The upcoming release was to be another double album, and not just that but also a concept album about sci-fi dystopias and the music industry. There were to be tie-in writings, an animated show, ARGs… and then the label said no. So the extra tracks got cut. All the extraneous non-album material got cut. The concept got largely cut – still present in the core of the songs but not tied together anymore. Bassist D’Arcy Wretzky left the band. And somewhere along the way, the album stopped being the next ambitious chapter in the band’s book and instead, the last.

The “cyber goth rock” sound planned for Machina got morphed somewhere along the line too, or at least it gained a new dimension as the plans started to finalise. Machina plays out like a pseudo best-of of the Pumpkins’ various styles. The muscular, heavy rock riffs, the radio-friendly stadium rock, the shoegazed-out walls of sound dreamily washing over the listener, the sense of understated beauty they sometimes revealed and the extended rock-outs all get their moment in the spotlight; only Adore’s synth ballads are missing, largely because they wouldn’t have had room for Chamberlin’s powerful drumming. In their place are more notable keyboard parts that hang in the background of most songs, accentuating the atmosphere and the emotional highs and lows, in practice giving Machina its own sound even when it takes a lot from the band’s history. It’s both futuristic and traditional at the same: bringing back the powerhouse rock that made the Pumpkins’ name but looking into the future. The short future, in any case – Machina’s 15-track run has a constant sense of finality to it, the constant musical climaxes coming across like one epic send-off after another. There’s a glimmer of bittersweet jubilation everywhere, with frequent references to things ending and goodbyes being said but played with a joy in the heart rather than falling all over in tears.

The miraculous thing is that somehow all the setbacks have made the band sound stronger than ever, downright defiantly so. As a group of performers the Pumpkins are incredibly rejuvenated: they’re incredibly hungry for glory and downright fierce throughout Machina, fighting against the tide with every bone of their body and pushing everything through. Chamberlain especially shines once again, almost like he felt like he had something to prove after his absence (another reason why “The Everlasting Gaze is such a powerful intro song – check out the drumming at the end). But Corgan’s songwriting is also similarly strengthened. The Adore sessions seem to have had a lasting effect on his songwriting: the subtler and more melody-heavy approach allowed Corgan to refine that side of his writing and make it consistent, and that same effect is present all over Machina. There’s depth and nuance to the songs here no matter what form they take and an incredible amount immortal melodies and stunner moments of songcraft presented consistently throughout. Even something like “Heavy Metal Machine” that at first sounds like a near-aimless, distortion-filled monster true to its name hides an excellently evocative melody deep within itself that bubbles to the surface when the song begins to develop new parts.

What all that means is that despite its underdog reputation, Machina doesn’t just match its other Pumpkins counterparts – often it even towers over them. “The Everlasting Gaze”, “Stand Inside Your Love”, “I of the Mourning”, “Try, Try, Try” and “This Time” all stand proudly among the likes of “1979” and “Disarm” – so evocatively atmospheric, powerfully backbone-kicking and sonically rich they are.  The ten minutes of “Glass and the Ghost Children” breeze by and carry the same strength throughout, something which rarely has been the case with Pumpkins’ extended moments. “The Imploding Voice” is like Corgan finally cracking the perfect harmony of noise and melody that he always wanted to reach while “Wound” does the same by merging together the more sensitive melodies with the band’s muscularity. “Age of Innocence” sounds liberated and in peace with itself – something that’s always been rare with the oft-tight-wound band. This extends to the album as a whole - the originally reactionary nature and its difficult development have left no traces and if anything, Machina sounds the most naturally grown and flowing of all the band’s albums. There are definitely a couple of weaker cuts involved thanks to Corgan’s need to always release as much music as possible and ultimately the album could have benefited by dropping off “The Crying Tree of Mercury” and “Blue Skies Bring Tears”, both too plodding to withstand their own length. But overall it doesn’t matter – Machina’s 70-odd minutes hardly feel so long thanks to the consistent excitement and rush, both on the band’s and the listener’s side.

In other words, for me this is the quintessential Pumpkins release. Gish is good but it’s obviously the first steps; I can see why people fall in love with the really good Siamese Dream but to me it’s still in search of the final puzzle piece; Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness features a filler song for every stone cold classic; Adore is one of the band’s best but very atypical of them. Machina brings together all the elements that come to my mind when I think of The Smashing Pumpkins and it presents them brilliantly. It’s the last proper release of their first incarnation, and the one that ultimately cemented their greatness while becoming one hell of a farewell. When I’m asked to define Pumpkins’ sound, Machina is the first thing that comes to my mind.

Rating: 9/10