CD1: 1) Prologue to History; 2) 4 Ever Delayed; 3) Sorrow 16; 4) Judge Yr'self; 5) Socialist Serenade; 6) Donkeys; 7) Comfort Comes; 8) Mr Carbohydrate; 9) Dead Trees and Traffic Islands; 10) Horses Under Starlight; 11) Sepia; 12) Sculpture of Man; 13) Spectators of Suicide (Heavenly Version); 14) Democracy Coma; 15) Strip It Down (Live); 16) Bored Out of My Mind; 17) Just a Kid; 18) Close My Eyes; 19) Valley Boy; 20) We Her Majesty's Prisoners
CD2: 1) We Are All Bourgeois Now; 2) Rock 'n' Roll Music; 3) It's So Easy (Live); 4) Take the Skinheads Bowling; 5) Been a Son (Live); 6) Out of Time; 7) Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head; 8) Bright Eyes (Live); 9) Train in Vain (Live); 10) Wrote for Luck; 11) What's My Name? (Live); 12) Velocity Girl; 13) Can't Take My Eyes Off You; 14) Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel; 15) Last Christmas (Live)
The greatest of b-side bands finally gets a compilation of their secret glories, and as great as this is you still can't help but feel it's a bit of a wasted opportunity.
Key tracks: "Prologue to History", "4 Ever Delayed", "Valley Boy"
As a heads-up, the below text is written by someone who’s devoted a lot of hours of his lifetime to hunting down, listening and compiling Manic Street Preachers b-sides, and is probably pretty obnoxious about it. My rating of this compilation is overall positive and if you’re just looking for a quick evaluation whether this is worth it, the answer is yes. But oh, what it could have been...
It was Manic Street Preachers who made me obsessed about b-sides. I have a wild attraction towards b-sides as an art form - far from the discards, hasty throwaways and mediocre chopping board leftovers that many consider them to be, I think non-album material is often a barely touched treasure trove full of exciting off-beat could-be classics, interesting experiments and underappreciated gems that have every right and chance to become special if you let them. I lament the death of the single, simply because it’s inadvertently also meant the death of the b-side. The Manics are in my books the greatest b-sides band there has ever been: their hidden back catalogue is full of immortal hits, powerful secrets and fascinating curios, where I genuinely feel that only paying attention to their albums is restricting yourself from the full extent of what makes the band special. Even their weakest eras have featured non-album songs which really should have found a place on the albums they represented, instead of what actually ended up on them. And that’s why I think Lipstick Traces, the band's first (and in 2020, only one to date) b-sides compilation, is a bundle of missed opportunities.
I understand that certain compromises must be made if you want to try to appeal to an audience beyond your most obsessed fans. By 2003, you could have filled a five-CD box set with the amount of b-sides the band had released, and that’s just counting the original studio material alone. So, making a more palatable product by selecting the best of the best to fill just a standard double-disc compilation makes sense from that perspective. What makes much less sense is the slapdash way the band have gone about the whole project, while fully knowing just how much people wanted something like this at the time. The song selection is completely haphazard, where fan favourites and songs they voted to be on the compilation on an official poll were ignored in place of choices that seem completely random. Making matters worse, only a single disc of the compilation is devoted to the original studio material, and the second disc is made entirely out of the band’s covers. That selection doesn't even include all the covers the band had officially released by this stage, leaving you with a 45-minute disc with so much empty space that you could have used to include more of what people actually wanted.
The covers disc is my main gripe with Lipstick Traces. For all the praise I heap on the Manics, they’ve never been a particularly interesting band to interpret other people’s songs. Nine times out of then the cover sounds largely identical to the original, just with James’ voice and usually a slightly beefier production; the tenth case only tends to be different because it’s just James all by himself on an acoustic guitar. The most out there of the lot is "Been a Son", where Nirvana's original punk rocker is made into an aggressively acoustic romp-and-stomp. There’s good material on the second disc - “We Are All Bourgeois Now” (McCarthy) is actually quite great (and technically not a b-side as it was a hidden track on Know Your Enemy), the newly recorded version of “Take the Skinheads Bowling” (Camper Van Beethoven) is good rock and roll fun and a marked improvement over the rather anaemic version they originally released in 1997, and James’ acoustic live version of Wham's “Last Christmas” is warm like a cosy fireplace on Christmas Eve. The only real weak spot is the early live rendition of Guns n Roses’ “It’s So Easy” where the band try to be more macho than they can pull off, with a shoddy recording quality to boot. But none of it feels even remarkably essential; you won’t find any revealing re-interpretations here, just recordings of a band faithfully playing songs they like. I can’t imagine why anyone would ever feel like revisiting the second disc outside the intent of giving it another spin because you feel guilty about neglecting it.
For all my moaning about what isn't on Lipstick Traces, the first disc where all the originals lie is still largely golden. The live version of "Strip It Down" is superfluous and unnecessary, "Bored Out of My Mind" and "Socialist Serenade" are fine tracks but definitely not songs I'd weigh over several others, and there's generally a bit of a bias towards the Everything Must Go period, presumably because that was the big success era and the new fans who bought the singles back then probably became very familiar with the respective b-sides. But taken as simply a selection of songs, this is really high class: it could very well be a mirror realm greatest hits record, because so many of the songs could have comfortably been singles in their own right. "Prologue to History" is such a massive anthem full of quickly unhinging anger that its lead position is quite possibly the best possible way to indicate this isn't just a selection of scraps (it was only ever taken off This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours because tonally it had no place on the album), and the gorgeously dreamy "Valley Boy" features one of James' greatest guitar solos and is an epic penultimate piece that could have rightly closed off a proper album. The tender "Sepia", autumnal "Just a Kid" and jovial "Mr Carbohydrate" are all rock solid big hitter rock songs with hooks of diamond. The early Manics' glam punk fury is perfectly represented through "Sorrow 16" (with its iconic spelling lesson), the ridiculous gatling gun vocal hell of "Sculpture of Man", the ugly-tearjerker "Donkeys", the jagged proto-The Holy Bible "Comfort Comes" and the original Heavenly Recordings version of "Spectators of Suicide", which has a raw, unpolished rock charm to it that the near-ambient album version would drop. For all my whinging, it's definitely a representative collection in terms of style and breadth.
There are also two previously unreleased tracks on the first disc, both of which befit the "secret history" angle quite neatly and which manage to tick both the early and later Manics boxes. "4 Ever Delayed" was originally intended to be one of the new songs for the Forever Delayed hits compilation but fell through the cracks for unexplainable reasons (the liner notes on Lipstick Traces are completely non-existent outside basic production credits, which is a tragedy) and only ever found a place on an obscure Japanese EP: it's made of the same ethereal synths and glistening keyboards as all the other new tracks of the era, but punching through with guitar walls in a most befittingly Manics-esque fashion, bridging between the classic Manics sound and the new ideas to come. It's a great, great song and giving it a proper spotlight here is one of Lipstick Traces' best graces. "Judge Yr'self" is a brand new recording but the song itself traces to around 1994-1995 when the band wrote it for potential inclusion on the 1995 Stallone-lead Judge Dredd film - the plans were buried when Richey disappeared and the song was forgotten, until the band decided to finish the job for Lipstick Traces. And it crunches - it's one of the heaviest songs Manics have recorded, veering close to metal at places. It's all visceral aggression and hard guitar riffs, James screaming his lungs out like he hasn't in years. It, too, is an excellent song.
I mentioned Lipstick Traces acting like a mirror realm greatest hits compilation earlier down the line, and it makes the most sense to consider it as a companion piece to Forever Delayed: The Greatest Hits released in the previous year. Both are compilations of great songs marred by slightly eyebrow-raising selections, both have two token new songs, both have second discs of less essential material (if you get the deluxe edition of Forever Delayed with the remixes) - and both should act as a taster for the world of riches that awaits those who choose to dip further. Lipstick Traces is the furthest thing from comprehensive and if you're a more casual listener it probably does a decent purpose, but what I hope it does to anyone who listens to it is to light a yearning to hear more of Manics' hidden treasures. It may take a little effort these days - the anniversary re-releases have almost consistently included all the b-sides from their respective periods which helps - but it's worth it. Lipstick Traces represents the tip of the iceberg: the tip already shines bright, and it only gets even brighter further down. Don't let my fanboy whinging get to you: this would be a 9 without the covers disc bringing the party down.
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