James Dean Bradfield - The Great Western (2006)

 

1) That’s No Way to Tell a Lie; 2) An English Gentleman; 3) Bad Boys and Painkillers; 4) On Saturday Morning We Will Rule the World; 5) Run Romeo Run; 6) Still a Long Way to Go; 7) Émigré; 8) Say Hello to the Pope; 9) To See a Friend in Tears; 10) The Wrong Beginning; 11) Which Way to Kyffin

Key tracks: “That’s No Way to Tell a Lie”, “Bad Boys and Painkillers”, “Émigré”

After 2004’s Lifeblood, Manic Street Preachers took the first break of their lifetime. Nicky Wire had been pondering about doing a solo album for a while so he set out to record one; Sean Moore took the opportunity to just enjoy time with his family; but James Dean Bradfield had no idea what to do. The Great Western, Bradfield’s first solo album and named after the train line between London and Wales he wrote most of the album on while travelling back and forth, was the result of circumstance and not really what he was driven to do: James has spoken many a times that he prefers to play and create music with the Manics and he had no real itch to make a solo record, but when you’re a man who obsessively loves to create music with a lot of spare time in his hands, it’s something that’s practically expected to happen. Even at the time of its release Bradfield was almost sheepish that The Great Western existed - like he was cheating on his band by writing music by himself and playing with other people.

Bradfield is the main songwriter in the Manics and so from that perspective The Great Western bears no surprises - it is all very identifiably JDB, melodic solos and impressive vocal theatrics and all, with a lot of detailed arrangements and additional instrumentation as if to highlight his role as his day job band’s instrumental wiz. Where it differs from the Manics significantly is that it’s a really cheery record, close to cheekily winking at the listener at times. It’s full of bouncy melodies, playful Beach Boys backing vocals and frolicking glockenspiels, to a point that many of these songs could be called summertime jams with no trace of irony. The more obvious change is that while Bradfield has always been the voice of the Manics, prior to this he had only ever sung his own words once. The Great Western gives him the chance genuinely sing his own material for most of the album, and for inspiration he's chosen his own past. Bradfield's (actually really good and in no way lacking next to Wire's) lyrics are full of hazy, uplifting nostalgia inspired by people and places of his past and present, partly happily reflecting on his memories and part wistfully looking back. The comfortably homey tone of the lyrics tie into the more genuinely positive musical ideas he’s rarely played with in the Manics, and so The Great Western isn’t an opportunity for Bradfield to experiment with musical styles he couldn’t do with his own band. Instead, it’s the chance to write some happy pop songs for once without feeling like he’s betraying the hard-worked reputation for anthemic misery.

There’s a certain level of freedom you can only get when you’re completely in control and that kind of boundlessness is what defines The Great Western. Right from its title the album invokes travelling as its central theme and it does invoke the same open-ended freedom of roaming the world around you and not bound to any given location - and if I owned a car, it’d be exactly the kind of record that would be in its element played out loud on the road. Bradfield makes everything on The Great Western sound so effortless as well: it’s awash with melodic riches, masterfully angled hooks and consistent highs, but it doesn’t sound meticulously planned or laboured even though you can tell so much attention went into its smallest details in a typical Bradfield style. The big pop moments are the obvious hook-in points to pin this down, simply because they’re where the album’s key tenet of breaking away from routine is best displayed, and they’re so charming in their unexpected directness. “That’s No Way to Tell a Lie”, “An English Gentleman”, “Bad Boys and Painkillers” (what a killer opening salvo) and “Say Hello to the Pope” are a celebration of James’ guitar work, his voice and especially the greatness of abundant backing vocals - an element of the album that deserves every single separate mention it gets because the use all the contrasting melodies, layered voices and call-and-answer sections make so much of the album’s magic. “That’s No Way to Tell a Lie” in particular is the kind of instantly addictive, succinct and precise single that Bradfield’s been trying to write for each Manics album ever since but rarely coming even close to this - and not even the most optimistic Manics albums would dream to feature something as outrageously upbeat as the sha-la-las and handclaps of "That's No Way to Tell a Lie". Another big highlight is“Bad Boys and Painkillers” (with lyrics by Nicky Wire, making this a Manics song in disguise), which swoons so wonderfully in its little world of harmonica licks, waves of keyboards and harmonies and intricately growing arrangement details - it’s massive, without ever really trying to sound as much.

The Great Western isn’t completely bereft of the more traditional James Dean Bradfield flair, and some of its strongest moments come from Bradfield going back to his old guitar hero habits. The drama of the stadium torchlit “Still a Long Way to Go” is the closest the album gets to the Manics and maybe would have deserved a shot to become part of that canon, with Bradfield showing off the sheer awe-inspiring volume and strength of his voice as he belts out the chorus in a way that gets your hair stand up. The conceptual title track and the heart and soul of the album “Émigré” is an all-out rock stand-out and also the album's most resonant track, Bradfield surrounding himself with guitars that manage to be both delicate and muscular at the same time, urgently pushing forward like the album’s titular train. While it's great to hear Bradfield play around with more novel ideas to excellent results, you can tell he's most at home here, and these two songs together form a slide towards the more contemplative side of the record. The less extroverted moments of The Great Western have the same warmth as their sunnier counterparts, so even at its moodiest it still feels like a comforting shoulder to lean against rather than anything truly melancholy: the contrasting intimate quiet of the Jacques Brel cover “To See a Friend in Tears” perhaps comes the closest, but it’s beset by the gospel-flavoured and choir-backed “The Wrong Beginning” and the dreamland sunset scene of “Which Way to Kyffin” - the latter of which especially is one of the album’s most evocative and quite frankly beautiful cuts.

Overall, The Great Western is a consistently great album where even the somewhat lesser cuts (“Run Romeo Run”, “On Saturday Morning We Will Rule the World”, to some extent “The Wrong Beginning” that plods a little too much before it gets really going) have parts that sparkle and shine. But did anyone expect anything less? Manics had been comfortably cruising from highlight to highlight in their golden age right before this record and Bradfield is their the primary musical contributor, so of course The Great Western is really good - there was never a risk it wouldn’t have been. I would imagine Bradfield knew that there weren’t many risks involved in writing it either, but rather than coasting along knowing there’s an audience ready for it, it’s clear the lack of pressure made recording the album all the more comfortable and relaxed. It’s a repeated point but it’s kind of the gist of the record: no chips on the shoulder, no weight on the shoulders. Simply a selection of great songs from a great musician, treating this sort-of peer-pressured solo album chance as a method to unwind and play something more relaxed and upbeat for his own fun, and the benefits of that lack of self-censorship is apparent all over the album. As far as solo records and side releases go The Great Western isn’t the sort of breakaway record that would establish Bradfield as someone who could convince you even if the Manics left you cold, and so it comfortably slots in the category where it is probably more of a fan record - but that absolutely does not tarnish its strengths or simply how good it sounds.

Rating: 8/10

Manic Street Preachers - Resistance Is Futile (2018)

1) People Give In; 2) International Blue; 3) Distant Colours; 4) Vivian; 5) Dylan & Caitlin (feat. The Anchoress); 6) Liverpool Revisited; 7) Sequels of Forgotten Wars; 8) Hold Me Like a Heaven; 9) In Eternity; 10) Broken Algorithms; 11) A Song for the Sadness; 12) The Left Behind
Deluxe Edition Bonus Disc: Original demos: 1) People Give In; 2) International Blue; 3) Distant Colours; 4) Vivian; 5) Dylan & Caitlin; 6) Liverpool Revisited; 7) Sequels of Forgotten Wars; 8) Hold Me Like a Heaven; 9) In Eternity; 10) Broken Algorithms; 11) A Song for the Sadness; 12) The Left Behind; Bonus tracks: 13) Concrete Fields; 14) A Soundtrack to Complete Withdrawal

Bright and happy but lacking in meat around its promising bones.

Key tracks: "International Blue", "Vivian", "Hold Me Like a Heaven"

A lot happened in the world after the last Manic Street Preachers album. Following Futurology, the band’s love letter to Europe, their native country decided to isolate themselves from the continent. The Western world became a political egg-and-spoon race of which country could make the biggest mess and the rest of the world wasn’t far behind, each month a new scandal. You would expect all this to have become a baiting carrot in front of Manics’ eyes - a band once famous for their open politics and their frustrated takedowns of the system they lived under, who you would think would be ready to face the new world order with fire and brimstone once more. But the Manics are no longer young angry punks, they’re now grown men with established careers, families and everything else that mellows a man out. So rather than facing the anger and misery around them, Resistance Is Futile became an album about how to run away from them. Despite its antagonistic title it’s really about the band wanting to openly welcome whoever would listen to it, inspired by the small pieces of hope to cling onto in life and the things you can retreat away from the world into, from art to family and the small pieces of good news in a world increasingly lacking in them.

Resistance Is Futile circles back towards the brighter and friendlier side of the Manics, as probably expected from an album that aspires to be positive. The marked difference from the previous albums where they focused on quick hooks and crowd-friendly choruses - say e.g. Postcards From a Young Man - is that Resistance Is Futile carves a little corner for itself rather than repeating past tricks, even if it does so by looking back. There's a very pristine, processed sound to the album with snappy drums, bright keyboard accents and clean guitars, which draw a direct line towards the 1980s. It's not Manics gone retro per se but there's a distinct element of the band flirting with the sounds of their own youth, tapping onto an aesthetic that takes them to their happy days of innocence. and which just so happens to combine very well with a more significantly melodic approach. In the past the band have always teetered on the edge of coming across calculated when being this direct, but Resistance Is Futile is above all sincere in its ideas: it sounds like a record that a group of friends make with themselves in mind above everyone else.

"International Blue" is the proof of concept. It was the made-to-measure lead single and with its shimmering production, tracked and processed drums and Bradfield's snappy guitar hooks, with all the sunshine pouring all over its pristine surface, it reflects across its parent album. It didn't sound like much when it was first announced but it's really shown its teeth as time has progressed and when in the context of the rest of the album, it's turned out to be an effortless and genuinely uplifting piece of summer-time rock most at home when life's looking lush. But while it's indicative of its parent album, the song that better exemplifies the album is "Liverpool Revisited". Its middle section from the solo onwards, all the melody rising to the sky and Bradfield adopting the millennial whoop/wordless vocal trend and claiming it as his own territory is genuinely superb: at that point the song reaches a timelessly epic nature, with a steel-strong melody taking a stand and announcing itself as something iconic right there then. It's the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Resistance Is Futile, partially thanks to its cunning use in the album's announcement trailer. But it's an incredible section surrounded by padding of much lesser caliber. If it wasn't for how clunky the stuttering gear switch between its verse and chorus is, you'd be inclined to forget the song existed. And that's the great conflict of Resistance Is Futile.

There are constant traces that Resistance Is Futile could be a surprising yet excellent new addition to the Manics' run, but then so much of it is best described as fine. It's an album that's on an even plateau of quality for most of its duration, but the climb isn't particularly tall and rarely does it leave an impression. There's a key hook to each song that's enough to keep them alive in memory but not so vividly that you'd come back for them. At worst it's when there's clearly something great in the background but it's weighed down by the rest of the song: like the sad case of "Liverpool Revisited", the Anchoress duet "Dylan & Caitlin" which is an exercise at creating a story sung from two perspectives that's a first for the Manics and which only occasionally almost gets as exciting in practice as it is in concept, "In Eternity" threatens to be an appropriately glamorous tribute to David Bowie but the band practically hold it back, and the Wire-sung "The Left Behind" could be a deliciously whiplashing subdued and melancholy finale for the otherwise bouncy album but largely it just plods along and whimpers to an ending. And that's the songs where there's an easy point of interest poking out - so many others play out pleasantly enough but fade into the background. The trio's performance is great and Wire's lyrics are mostly genuinely interesting as he tilts his introspective pen to a new angle, but the songs let them down. It's hard to pin down what exactly has gone awry there, but simply put the material simply isn't that strong despite its best efforts, like everything is a revision or two away from the standards Manics fare. But on the plus side there's only one clear dip and that's "Broken Algorithms", another Nicky Wire vs The Modern Technology ramble which is at odds with the rest of the album's message and sonically is a throwback to Send Away the Tigers, which no one really needs.

Credit where credit's due though, and there are a few songs across the album where the album does reach the potential it shyly displays throughout. "Vivian" is a lush uptempo cut and effectively takes what "International Blue" does right and improves on it even further. Throughout the album Bradfield loves delivering short signature riffs that make up most of the earworm hooks for those songs, and the chorus licks of "Vivian" are the best of their kind on the record - especially when they begin to alternate with one of the album's strongest vocal melodies (in particular when The Anchoress does another cameo in the later choruses). With a little drama in its verses and the soaring centrepoint moments it's practically playful, and it puts a big dumb smirk on my face whenever it comes along. And if "Vivian" is the joy in the album's soul, "Hold Me Like a Heaven" is its heart. Wire's mother passed away between the last album and this, and "Hold Me Like a Heaven" is an ode to her, which the band use to dive into the idea of music as a positive, healing element in a time of uncertainty and sadness. It's the epitome of the album's concept because it's a real, personal angle to it and so it becomes by and far the greatest song on it, with a chorus melody so poignant and effective that even the re-appearance of those very anti-Manicsesque wordless whoah-ohs hit precisely with the personal but universal appeal they strive to be. It's a beautiful tearjerker dressed up as a stadium pop moment - pulled off brilliantly.

Highlighting so few songs across an entire record seems a little unfair for Resistance Is Futile because it's an album I want to root for - there's a solid concept, there's places where that concept is proven to work and if everything clicked together as well as it could I'd quite happily accept a friendly shoulder of optimism from a band who rarely offer it. Yet even I, the rambling man who has written a small book's worth of words about this band by now, am stuck at finding anything really that interesting to talk about it. It's fine. It's nice. And for most of its duration that's all it reaches. When Manics have stumbled in the past they've at least fallen head-first into the gutter; Resistance Is Futile is the first time they've delivered an album that's enjoyable enough but doesn't invite any real reaction about it, good or bad - even if I'm disappointed about it I can't even feel that dismayed, it simply doesn't provoke that strong a reaction. It begs for stronger set of songs to go with the ideas it represents and no matter how in tune the band sound, it's the strength of the material that ultimately matters: and so, Resistance Is Futile is a nice enough listen that gets wheeled out once a year to be enjoyed briefly before being returned to the shelf to be forgotten again.

The set of demos on the deluxe edition are rather unexciting as well, and many of them resemble the album versions to the point that they sound more like rough mixes than work in progress - and at that stage you're better off just listening to the record. The two studio originals are more interesting though.. "Concrete Fields" is a bittersweet nostalgic stroll sung by Wire, an autobiographical rant that sounds jolly but Wire looking at through melancholy lenses - complete with an interpolation of Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun" towards the end that after the initial shock actually works. "A Soundtrack to Complete Withdrawal" shares the soundscape of the main album but tonally is closer to the last few records, and creates an introspective mini-epic with a decidedly moodier lurch forward than the rest of this era. And in all honesty? While neither are true b-side standouts, they both probably could have made the album in lieu of some other songs that are on the main disc without me batting an eyelid. They likely didn't make the cut because they're at odds with the album's general quest for optimism, which is fair - but they've would've been intriguing offshoots.

Rating: 6/10

Manic Street Preachers - Futurology (2014)

1) Futurology; 2) Walk Me to the Bridge; 3) Let's Go to War; 4) The Next Jet to Leave Moscow; 5) Europa Geht Durch Mich (feat. Nina Hoss); 6) Divine Youth (feat. Georgia Ruth Williams); 7) Sex, Power, Love and Money; 8) Dreaming a City (Hugheskova); 9) Black Square; 10) Between the Clock and the Bed (feat. Green Gartside); 11) Misguided Missile; 12) The View From Stow Hill; 13) Mayakovsky
Deluxe Edition Bonus Disc: Original demos: 1) Futurology; 2) Walk Me to the Bridge; 3) Let's Go to War; 4) The Next Jet to Leave Moscow; 5) Europa Geht Durch Mich; 6) Divine Youth; 7) Sex, Power, Love and Money; 8) Dreaming a City (Hugheskova); 9) Black Square; 10) Between the Clock and the Bed; 11) Misguided Missile; 12) The View From Stow Hill; 13) Mayakovsky Bonus tracks: 14) Blistered Mirrors; 15) Empty Motorcade; 16) The Last Time I Saw Paris

German roads gave the Manic Street Preachers a vision of the way forward, and have revitalised their creativity.

Key tracks: "Futurology", "Europa Geht Durch Mich", "The View From Stow Hill"

I've been making a concentrated effort to review the Manic Street Preachers back catalogue over the past few months, mostly in order of release. I've done this sort of chronological blitz through the band's back catalogue a few times over the years  - not counting listening to these albums as and when they came out - and I'm sharing this behind-the-scenes glimpse here because going through the records in order always makes Futurology's position in that line-up clear, and it's hard not to think about the album with that in mind. While there's an obvious personal bias (call it nostalgia if you will) factor to how I value the band's first seven albums so highly, they were all also products of the band operating ahead without fear; they've never been the most challenging band, but during that initial stretch of albums they were frequently challenging themselves and introducing new ideas. In the late 2000s that fizzled out to some degreee and the band started to tread on eggshells, operating a little too safely in a particular musical space they had degreed their comfort zone. I bring this up (once more, if you've stumbled into this review after the others) because it's actually relevant here instead of an aging fan complaining, and 2013's Rewind the Film showed the signs of Manics correcting their course. It contained traces of the same spirit and modus operandi that the band's first decade and a half had, with signs pointing towards the trio realising that something had happened to their sense of adventure and maybe breaking out of that comfort zone was necessary again. And if Rewind the Film was the promise being made, then Futurology is where they held true to it.

As the story goes, the origin of Futurology is tied in with that of Rewind the Film, with the two albums coming out of the same sessions and split into two separately released chapters. Neither of them are an afterthought, and I strongly believe the band when they've said they were on a creative high to a point where two separate albums were a legit possibility. And still, Futurology gives the impression that this is what they were originally moving towards before Rewind the Film started to rear its head along the way. That album spread its wings surprisingly wide around its acoustic base concept (less charitable would call it ‘slightly incohesive’ but that’s too negative) almost as if the original idea wasn't quite enough to make up a full record. Compare this to Futurology, which is a traditionally meticulously planned Manics album through and through, with a firm musical concept and a high-design visual theme to go with it, both of which you could distill into a Nicky Wire promotional tagline. It’s too much to just be one half of one period and the way its sound bled to Rewind the Film at places indicates as much. It's almost a high level concept album, the kind of thing that passion projects are sparked out of when someone gets an idea into their head they just can't shake - and it would go a long way to explain how invested the band sound in it.

It's impossible to convey just in words how rejuvenated and new the Manics sound on Futurology. If there's an overarching theme to the album that overshadows all the other running themes through it, it's that of the Manics throwing their previous rulesets into the recycling bin and following their whims to places they may have felt too reserved to go to across the past few albums. The twist is how it manifests in the strangest way - besides the obvious differences in sound (and we'll get to that in a minute) Futurology is one of the few times where the band have really leaned against their offbeat sense of humour. Where Rewind the Film was a sad album of middle-age depression and loneliness, Futurology is a cheeky bastard. Wire has said the album is the most optimistic album they've made and despite the usual Manics lyrical tropes rearing their head (war, alienation, despair, the lot) the band are having fun with them to an almost self-aware fashion. Wire is still in an introspective mode following Rewind the Film but he's no longer completely defeated by his demons, and either spends time reflecting on them with insight or even actively snarking at himself. In a delightfully twisted way it's a joyous album, and that odd positivity is reflected in the wild adventurousness of the record. Its curveballs are full of the kind of free-spirited levity that the Manics have mostly hidden in their b-sides in the past - now it's coming out in broad daylight and Futurology revels in it.

To match this, the subdued and largely acoustic fields of Rewind the Film are gone and in their place are mirror-glad skyscrapers and modernist angles. Futurology is a sharp, dynamic album that rushes forward while looking forward as per its title, the band making a ruckus with Bradfield's guitars in lead after they had been quieted down for Rewind the Film, with programmed elements and synthesizers intermingling at every step. Manics have dabbled with electronic elements in the past but in more introspective settings; this is the first time they find their way into the band's favoured mode of bold guitar rock. There's an abstract European, and more specifically German, influence to it - it was recorded in Berlin (and the band were very self-aware how it was their "Berlin album") and inspired by their travels across Europe and the sense of escapism they associate with the continent. There's a kind of propulsive, repetitive rhythm to most tracks that could vaguely be associated with krautrock motoriks, while the synthesized elements together with the live band dynamic bring forth associations with other famous Berlin-based experiments across rock history. The band hired Alex Silva as the producer, who they had previously worked with on The Holy Bible, and while the two albums are sonically worlds apart, Silva brings out the same kind of zealous drive from the band to Futurology: like The Holy Bible, Futurology is an album guided very clearly by a particular vision and everyone involved is throwing in everything they have to get that vision turned into reality. There's parts of the album where the lines between a "rock" album and something else start to blur and veer across to something subtler and stranger, and yet it still comes off louder and more bolsterous than many of the Manics albums that deliberately tried to tap into those rock and roll ideals directly. This in practice means that the band's strengths are in full display but with a new set of clothes on, which the title track at the start so strongly shows: "Futurology" is a traditional Manics anthem at heart but with a new paint coat over it and a brandy lit fire under its belly that makes it a propulsive, earnest manifesto for the record. It's an opener that sounds better each time you hear it, because the way it runs through the album's ideas becomes more and more evident the more you hear it start the journey.

The title track also features Wire singing its towering stadium-ready chorus, his rough voice bringing a hint of vulnerability to the lining of the song - it's his first time (outside his solo songs) leading the chorus of a Manics song, and a single at that, after so many cameos and verse trade-offs with Bradfield. The experimenting around Bradfield taking a backseat in lead vocals that was first shown on Rewind the Film continues its casual development here, but you could easily argue that the whole premise has been realised better this time around: or in other words, the other vocals are now used to augment James rather than replace him outright. Wire doesn’t get any solo songs (unless you count the seemingly unscripted shouting in the otherwise instrumental “Mayakovsky”) but his supporting vocal spots are prominent and play off Bradfield's lead vocals excellently, two songs feature choirs (a proper one in “Misguided Missile” and a gathering of studio visitors in “Let’s Go to War”) to give Bradfield a boost from the behind, and where the guest vocal spots are back they’re not obscuring James completely. The three songs with featured vocalists are all clear duets this time, with Bradfield and the collaborators exchanging lines between one another and sharing equal parts of the songs' weights. The co-headliners are overall great as well and probably even better utilised than on Rewind the Film which already did a great job with it, with Georgia Ruth Williams lending a tenderness to the contemplative slow cut “Divine Youth” that contrasts with James’ stadium-ready vocals and Green Gartside’s very distinctive nasal tone working in tandem with the general dreamland surreality of “Between the Clock and the Bed”.

And then there’s “Europa Geht Durch Mich”, the album’s unofficial theme song and the epitome of the record’s fixation with its country of recording. It’s a ridiculous song, and there’s no better way to describe it: built upon a hulking stomp that sounds like someone is pounding an industrial complex, it’s lead by what sounds like an air raid siren and culminates in the German actress Nina Hoss sing-shouting taglines about Europe in German. It’s somewhere between krautrock and industrial dance clubs, and it’s absolutely not the work of people who take themselves Very Very Seriously. And that’s why it’s so great, and there’s no better song to tie the album together - literally, as echoes of it cameo across the album’s length. There’s an irreverence to it that’s not entirely unlike the antagonising wink-wink posturing of Generation Terrorists or the more chaotic parts of Know Your Enemy, but reinterpreted by a group of veteran musicians on a road trip across some fantasy Europe. That off-kilterness isn't just restricted to "Europa Geht Durch Mich" either - the sci-fi secret agent theme "Dreaming a City" that's so unlike any other Manics instrumental so far (and easily the best one they've released by this point), the bitterly gleeful group chorus of “Let’s Go to War” that marches onto death with a smile on its face and the completely bonkers futuristic disco-rock of “Sex, Power, Love & Money” are things that are hard to believe they exist after years of the band taking themselves very seriously on record.

Futurology isn't all absurd style experiments and studio curios, and between the lines there's an honest and serious Manic Street Preachers album waiting to emerge. The likes of "The Next Jet to Leave Moscow", "Black Square" and "Futurology" are timeless Manics songs, but now playing around with the same risk-embracing attitude as the rest of the album. “Walk Me to the Bridge” is a standard straight-to-point latter-day Manics lead single but this time it's genuinely exciting and continues to be just as thrilling and refreshing no matter how many times you hear it, with a fantastic, almost menacing bass-driven structure that explodes into a blitz of synths in its chorus. That continuous sense of freshness and excitement runs across throughout, sometimes for the simple reason that the band are hitting all the exact right notes you look for in their music, like with the propulsive and beautifully sarcastic "The Next Jet to Leave Moscow", the soaring title track or the undeniably massive "Misguided Missile" where the finale - choirs blowing and all - sounds immense in a nigh-physically moving way. Other times it's in the sense of discovery within the deep production layers, reminiscent of prior richly immersive albums like Lifeblood and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours - "Between the Clock and the Bed" loops and swirls around beautifully, and the layers of the brilliant "Black Square" hide little secrets in some of the album's strongest melodies, culminating in a breakdown that literally breaks the body of the song away for a moment of chaotic rush before the chorus hits again stronger than ever. The half-acoustic half-electronic "The View From Stow Hill" not just bridges the two sibling albums together, but it radiates the classic beautiful melancholy that the band have always mastered and knocks it out of the park so well that even Wire namedropping Twitter and Facebook in the lyrics manages to sound decent. It's a beautiful song with a particularly resonant chorus melody, and ranks among the band's best album closers - or it would, if "Mayakovsky" wouldn't burst through the door like Kramer and rowdily thrash around the room. Futurology is a cheeky album, and it does not want you to forget about that right as you imagine the record is about to end in a genuinely poignant note.

It's a baffling but genuinely rather fun way to end the album and even after you've gotten used to it and know it's coming, it still feels like a surprise every time it appears - just like "Futurology" feels more resonant each time it starts the album and never loses its freshness. The disparate parts of Futurology could come loose at any moment but the Manics hold them down through a very strong vision for what they've set out to do, and the earnest willingness to take risks along the way which pays off fantastically. To go back on my personal experiences - and this is my review so I can - the great triumph of Futurology is that it's so clearly reminiscent of the band's golden years in its vigour, creativity and spirit; it reminds me of the Manics I was obsessed with and like that particular iteration of band has returned after a period where it felt like they were in danger of becoming another veteran band releasing good but inessential records to pad out their catalogue for fans only. But Futurology is anything but padding: it's a creative resurrection and revitalisation that builds on the potential that Rewind the Film hinted at, in a way that is downright joyous from fan's perspective but doesn't need that stamp of approval to stand up, because it's consistently exciting just from the point of view of a fan of music in general. Futurology features Manics' best songwriting in years, a style of production and choice of soundworld that brings the best out of those melodies and gives them to kick to send them soaring, and it's a return of the attitude the band had when they were on their peak. Twelve albums in and hitting their third decade, here the Manics sound as thrilling and vital as they've ever been in their prime. As the title track states: "we'll come back one day - we never really went away".

The deluxe edition offers the standard demo versions: no hidden secrets this time, just a few extra Wire lead vocals, a fully English-language version "Europa Geht Durch Mich" and a couple of takes with just James and his guitar (and occasionally a drum machine), otherwise it's mainly rougher takes and some surprisingly finished versions that are 90% close to the final version. The three bonus studio tracks are the more exciting thing, as the band had started to ween away from strict singles and b-sides at this stage and bonus drops like this have replaced them. "Blistered Mirrors" occupies the sort of halfway point between Rewind the Film and Futurology that most of the non-album tracks from these two eras exist in, and is the weakest of the lot to the point that there's not much to say about it. "The Last Time I Saw Paris" is the closest to the main album in its Euro-fetishism and guest vocals, with an uncredited vocalist (who I believe might be James' wife) providing spoken word narration across a sweeping cinematic backing. And while it's really neat and wonderfully lush, the award goes to "Empty Motorcade" - full of urgency as it speeds down the highway on its part-programmed rhythm, running on the main album's dynamics and escalating into a chorus that some would say is too good for a bonus track.

Rating: 9/10

Bad Books - III (2019)

1) Wheel Well; 2) UFO; 3) Myths Made Plain; 4) Lake House; 5) I Love You, I'm Sorry, Please Help Me, Thank You; 6) Neighborhood; 7) I Wrote It Down for You; 8) Left Your Body; 9) Supposed to Be; 10) Army

Kevin Devine and Manchester Orchestra resurrect their collaboration to bring aching folk songs from the edge of space.

Key tracks: "UFO", "I Love You, I'm Sorry, Please Help Me, Thank You", "Left Your Body"

The first two Bad Books albums were a straightforward collaboration between Manchester Orchestra and Kevin Devine: Manchester Orchestra got to flesh out the songwriting of a different frontman, while Devine got the chance to have a different set of players behind him. Those two albums slot quite comfortably in the continuum for both artists but III, the reunion album (the last Bad Books album prior to this was released in 2012), operates a little differently. The collaboration has also shrunk down to just three people with Devine and Manchester Orchestra's frontman Andy Hull and guitarist Robert McDowell. As the removal of the rhythm section makes it clear, the aim has been to move things to a simpler territory: Devine and Hull alternate in the frontman role across ten acoustic folk songs, intimate and drilling down to the basics.

Though not quite. The base sound of III is sparse but it's a remarkably rich album sonically. All over the record are all kinds of atmospheric elements swiveling in and out of existence: synthesizer effects, keyboard pads, electronic shimmer, ambient-esque guitar textures, unidentifiable sounds faintly heard somewhere at the back of the song. In their core each song on III is a gentle campfire moment, but from a production perspective that campfire is somewhere at the edge of the galaxy, illuminating the dark between distant stars - one review described it as "Simon & Garfunkel in space", and it's a description that hasn't left my head. Despite the intentionally limited structural elements the songs are heavily layered, leaving the aching melodies across the album to float into the unlimited horizon somewhere beyond the asteroid belt.

And it is very much an aching album. Both Devine and Hull have gently-spoken voices that manage to stir an incredible amount of emotion when paired with the right kind of melancholy, and they revel in it here. While the songs are largely dominated by one of the two frontmen (apart from the closing mini-epic "Army" where they swap verses throughout), they constantly harmonise with one another and the end result is positively elegiac, both sad and almost life-affirmingly beautiful in how touching it can be. III is above all a gorgeous album that creates its own soundscape and forms a comforting blanket out of it. Many of the best songs - "Wheel Well", "UFO", "Lake House", "Left Your Body" - are sad songs full of confusion and uncertainty, but they act like little hymns to hold onto during the turmoil.

Maybe that's the reason why the stand-out moment of the album is its one moment of genuine hope for the future. The Devine-lead "I Love You, I'm Sorry, Please Help Me, Thank You" is a phenomenal song that plays out with clarity and down-to-earth presence that the rest of the album avoids, grounding the soung for a brief moment of happiness. Devine's realisation on the meaning of life when holding his baby daughter in his arms and the mix of parental worry and careful hope he feels fuels a song that sounds like a skyscraping anthem despite its minimal arrangement. It's not just the best song on the album but - as someone who looped into this through his general appreciation for Devine first and foremost - it's also one of the best songs Devine has written, period.

III is generally somewhat of a stand-out. Bad Books up to this album have been nice - fine - good - but definitely a side project for both parties involved. By transforming its shape into something else III not just breaks apart from the first two albums in sound but also in resonance, underlining the strengths of its creators with ideas and elements that sound novel in this particular context. It sounds like a meaningful album, part of the canon and not a flight of fancy for the hardcore fans to listen to. It's a beautiful album, an extended moment of quiet serenity that makes something peaceful out of something sad - and in these chaotic years when this is being written, something like that is most definitely welcomed.

Rating: 8/10

Afternoons - Say Yes (2014)

1) Graffiti Artist; 2) Say Yes; 3) Saturday Morning; 4) Bored Teenagers; 5) Gloria; 6) Love Is a Western Word; 7) Oh Heather; 8) Perfect Wilderness; 9) Said I Might; 10) The Intervention; 11) We're Just Below the Sun

Semi-posthumous pick-n-mix pop bombast from a spectacularly unlucky band who finally got the chance to get their music out.

Key tracks: “Say Yes”, “Bored Teenagers”, “Love Is a Western Word”

Here's a brief summary of the history of Afternoons. The band formed out of another band, Irving, with the two lead members feeling that their latest ideas did not work with their current band; they split off, tried to find members to join the project they now called Afternoons, and eventually recruited their old Irving bandmates when they found no one else who they gelled with. A local radio station gets really hyped out about the initial recordings and the word-of-mouth reputation starts spreading, and the band got picked up by a label and begin plans to get recording their debut under a Grammy-winning engineer. Suddenly, the aforementioned radio station shuts down without warning, taking down the initial grassroots buzz with it. Then a clash with a Welsh band also called Afternoons forces this Afternoons to change their name to Shadow Shadow Shade, rendering all their printed promotional material useless. Their management tells them to drop the album they've been working on and to record a new one from scratch, and once it's done and ready to go out, the management's promo tactic is to not promote the record at all so no one knows about it. Closely following this, the band's booking agent literally disappears in an earthquake and upon rescue, quits the industry, leading to a cancellation of the upcoming tour. Then the band's label get bought out by another label and the band are immediately dropped - at which point they simply call it quits. Because after all that, why not?

I went on a little research trip around the internet to find out a little bit more about this band that I discovered in a mixtape and who have very little information of them online, and I did not expect to bump into one of the unluckiest groups known to man.

Some years after the dissolution of Shadow Shadow Shade the band re-formed under their original name to release the album they originally shelved around 2009 - i.e. Say Yes, this very album - but they have since been so quiet that I doubt the reunion lasted any longer than that. For the band the release of Say Yes looks to be more about bringing closure than a second (or third) start. For the listener, knowing the context, it's an interesting piece of internet indie mythology. Here's a group who could have easily become part of the blog canon; the size of the sound present on Say Yes would've slotted right in with the early-stage Polyphonic Sprees and Arcade Fires, complete with big group vocals all over the place and horns galore but just with more synths (before either band discovered synths). I'm going to say it right off the bat that this isn't a lost classic that is desperately due a posthumous appraisal, but it's very good in what it is: the debut album of a band with a whole lot of ideas.

The piece of initial lore about the core members feeling stylistically restrained in their original band seems plausible, because the one thing that jumps out from Say Yes is that it reinvents itself with nearly every song. There's a common ground between each track through the production and certain elements (lots of group vocal harmonies in particular) tie the songs together, but you could take each song out of its context and convincingly argue that they're from completely different albums. "Love Is a Western Word" hits all the golden late 00s blog-indie tropes, "Graffiti Artist" and "Bored Teenagers" go full-on synth pop, "Oh Heather" is a Nick Cave ballad before it flicks into a super-processed club stomper, "Perfect Wilderness" flirts with a darker acoustic edge that's at odds with the rest of the record's shining synths, "Said I Might" threatens to go rockabilly, "We're Just Below the Sun" would've been at home on MGMT's Oracular Spectacular and yet, somehow, the pompous parade march of "Say Yes" still sounds out of place amongst all of these. You can't help but respect the ambition and Say Yes does manage to make something oddly cohesive out of its wild disregard for consistency: it’s a bit of a mess but it’s almost close to making a statement out of the mess.

But really it’s just a slightly unrefined debut from a band with a ton of potential. There’s a number of great songs here - “Say Yes” is positively explosive, the swooning synth epic “Bored Teenagers” would have been a shoe-in on any respecting songs of the year list in a world that was kinder to the band, and “Gloria”, “Love Is a Western Word” and “Oh Heather” could have stood a chance too. The whole mid-section of the album is a minor triumph of uninhibited and unrestricted creativity, synths frolicking in wild abandon set to propulsive rhythms and the band’s sincere attempts in building choruses and singalong moments that would unite strangers in festival fields. It's a pick-and-mix indie pop bombast. As a part of the scattershot nature of the album though, sometimes the band either quite don’t hit the target (both “Said I Might” and “Perfect Wilderness” have good ideas that don’t realise as well as they could), offer lesser variants of established tricks (“Saturday Morning”) or just fade in the background ("The Intervention"). You can tell why there was buzz around the band and why they were threatening to be the next big thing, and also that maybe album number two (if we ignore the Shadow Shadow Shade album, which is very different) would have taken them there.

You can't help but root for Afternoons though, even if retrospectively, and I am left wanting a little more. There's a vision behind Say Yes and Afternoons were a band with clearly a lot of things to say, and you can almost imagine a series of equally diverse, even more exciting albums in the horizon. Unlike many of my single-album internet fancies, this wasn’t just a case of the great random number generator of life not picking a band in their favour but it was seemingly actively wanting to sabotage them, which makes the album all the more sympathetic. It’s got as many great possibilities as it does great songs - and the silver lining is that the album eventually got the chance to get out there and get a chance to live a second life among random passers by like me.

Rating: 7/10

Physical corner: n/a, digital only release (to my knowledge)

Manic Street Preachers - Rewind the Film (2013)

1) This Sullen Welsh Heart (feat. Lucy Rose); 2) Show Me the Wonder; 3) Rewind the Film (feat. Richard Hawley); 4) Builder of Routines; 5) 4 Lonely Roads (feat. Cate Le Bon); 6) (I Miss The) Tokyo Skyline; 7) Anthem for a Lost Cause; 8) As Holy as the Soil (That Buries Your Skin); 9) 3 Ways to See Despair; 10) Running Out of Fantasy; 11) Manorbier; 12) 30-Year War
Deluxe Edition Bonus Disc: Original Demos: 1) This Sullen Welsh Heart; 2) Show Me the Wonder; 3) Rewind the Film; 4) Builder of Routines; 5) 4 Lonely Roads; 6) (I Miss The) Tokyo Skyline; 7) Anthem for a Lost Cause; 8) As Holy as the Soil (That Buries Your Skin); 9) 3 Ways to See Despair; 10) Running Out of Fantasy; 11) Manorbier; 12) 30-Year War; Live at the O2, 2011 13) There By the Grace of God; 14) Stay Beautiful; 15) Your Love Alone Is Not Enough; 16) The Love of Richard Nixon; 17) Revol

The first signs of a creative rebirth - Wire's introspection meets the band trying on a more acoustic route.

Key tracks: "This Sullen Welsh Heart", "Rewind the Film", "Builder of Routines"

A long-recurring piece of Manic Street Preachers mythology has been the idea of an acoustic album. It was something that had been haunting the back the band’s mind for years and years, frequently reappearing as an aside n in interviews and potentially initiated a couple of times across the band’s history, but it always either fell on the wayside or transformed quickly into a different direction. James Dean Bradfield in particular had been namedropping Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska for years as an inspiration, but by the time the band had entered their third decade of activity the concept seemed to be on its way to be a piece of fan lore, and nothing tangible. But then, following the failed “last shot at mass communication” of Postcards From a Young Man the band took a break and when they reconvened, they (for once) kept true to their promise of not trying to repeat that same bag of tricks again. The recording sessions for the new album had no greater plan or focus, but they turned out to be extremely fertile - so much so that the band realised they had a lot more songs than they knew what to do with. Two clear directions to take were starting to pop out of the overall wealth of material, and the decision was made to create two albums. The selection of the less electrified, contemplative songs became the heart of Rewind the Film, the first of the duology - and through that, the band finally seized the chance of realising one of their long-ignored plans.

Rewind the Film isn’t Nebraska by a long shot and it's not even near to any kind of intimate collection of campfire songs, but it’s the closest the band has been to the concept of an album built around acoustic instruments. A good half of the songs feature veritably rich arrangements (in particular the symphonic title track which rides on a layered David Axelrod sample), while others heavily feature programmed elements that bridge the gap between this and the more electronic Futurology, the second album still to come. The acoustic aspect has mainly been restricted to James’ choice of guitars, and even then his electric guitar hasn’t been banned completely - its appearance has simply been restricted to a couple of guest spots where its sudden appearance makes the most impact. This may not sound like much but Manic Street Preachers have been recognisable throughout their history by Bradfield’s electric guitar sound and the riffs and solos that come with it, and so their absence is immediately notable. Taking things further, Bradfield doesn’t try to raise his acoustic guitar as a replacement lead either, and there isn't any particular defining element in the album's soundscape as a result. For an album where the basic description sounds like it could be a one-thing shtick, it’s anything but: the songs vary significantly from one to the next, from intimate confessionals to busy electronic soundscapes and would-be rock songs that have been forced to sit down for a second.

Coinciding with moving himself away from the spotlight instrumentally, Rewind the Film overall - and intentionally - diminishes Bradfield's general leading role. At the time Bradfield confessed that he was bored of his own voice, that after so many years of dominating the microphone he felt like the band needed something or someone else to freshen things up. While Nicky Wire had become a more regular feature on the studio albums, he was never going to take the lead to any larger degree; and so the band were inspired to invite other vocalists in the studio. There’s three guest spots across Rewind the Film and together they run the whole gamut of features: Lucy Rose mainly works background vocals on “This Sullen Welsh Heart”, the Richard Hawley-featuring title track is a full duet between him and Bradfield, and most strikingly Cate Le Bon is the de facto lead on “4 Lonely Roads”. With one Wire song ("As Holy as the Soil") and one instrumental (“Manorbier”), Bradfield is wholly or partially absent for nearly half the album, which takes a while to get used to but proves out to be a successful trick. Manics for certain aren’t in need of a new vocalist and Bradfield's vocals aren't in the danger of sounding stale, but the guests are a perfect fit to the album’s sound world. All three have a significant presence and audible chemistry with the material presented, and they suit their respective songs perfectly. Rose’s gentle voice works gorgeously against James’ in the quiet opener “This Sullen Welsh Heart”, Hawley’s dramatic baritone is right at home against the exploding orchestras and keyboards of “Rewind the Film” and Le Bon’s calm delivery is a natural fit to the relaxed stroll of “4 Lonely Roads”. You can tell their contributions are a success because you don't actually miss Bradfield for the time they're on centre stage, and the band have created something new out of it. Apart from “Little Baby Nothing” way back in the day, Manics’ few duet spots across the years have been afterthoughts, collaborations placed on top of songs that weren't meant to be duets; here it sounds like the band wrote the songs with their guests in mind, even if that isn't necessarily the reality. That's what makes their sudden appearance work.

The stronger presence of people outside to the band runs somewhat counterpoint to the album's general themes, because in terms of its content Rewind the Film is Wire’s most personal and directly confessional record yet, and it is a sad album. Wire had previously described Lifeblood as “The Holy Bible for 35-year olds”, but this is closer to that parallel; one man soaking the songs with his own psychoanalysis, this time obsessed with reflecting on the past. It's an album about aging, painful nostalgia, old failures and the never-ending worry that it's too late to fix things up, and desperately holding onto the few pieces of your life that grant the familiar safety to retreat into. Wire starts the record with "I don't want my children to grow up like me", takes time to admit he's "so sick and so tired of being 4 real", defeatedly admits "I am no longer the centre of the universe" in a way that trashes his legendary rock and roll id, and runs away hiding in childhood memories on the title track. Where the music flutters and blusters in order to counter the standard associations with acoustic albums and sounds thoroughly ecstatic at times, Wire's lyrics are one melancholy verse after another, retreating further to his own shell. The scattering of songs that are on a different tract barely feel like distractions: "Show Me the Wonder" sounds defiant but now and then throws a line that questions its own boldness to tackle itself, "Tokyo Skyline" is a genuine love letter to Japan and yet is all but blatant about how it's an escapist fantasy for Wire to escape to, and "30-Year War" simply switches the melancholy to anger as the personal moves to political. Wire's been introspective before but Rewind the Film is straight soul-purging more often than it's not and it's oddly harrowing, especially when it's sung by other people; it's hard to grasp just how depressing the album really is when the attention is mostly on the sudden new sounds that allow the songs to hide their real nature.

The thing is - and I'm sorry to keep the sad artisté cliché alive and well - Wire's introspective moments have often coincided with creative musical peaks for the band and once again his melancholy has heralded the trio finding the right direction again. After the mass communication wilderness years of the past three albums, the band were in a desperate need of rerouting, and Rewind the Film a realisation - albeit not a flawless one - of the promises the band made after the chart-seeking years fizzled out to their end. It's an album that looks somewhere new for the group and doesn't abide to any strictly set doctrine of how the band should represent themselves, and for the first time in a while it feels like the band just allowed themselves to create without ulterior motives. In other words, despite its placid nature Rewind the Film is thoroughly exciting, and that often directly translates to the music being excellent. Even though the album attempts to bare things down at places, it's especially the parts where Rewind the Film shows its flair a little that come alive well and truly. The busy electronic skittering against the scene-setting violin of "Tokyo Skyline" sounds genuinely giddy, the brief horn outro for "Builder of Routines" is a drop-dead gorgeous finale for the slowly intensifying song and you wish it would last so much longer (alongside the rest of the song), and the heftly layered part-sample backdrop for "Rewind the Film" is sweepingly cinematic. Moving away from guitar solos and the need to write constant anthems has revitalised the band's creative spree so you get more variety, more twists, more sudden moments that you love to point out. Wire's melancholy may dominate the album lyrically but around it, the band have created a very varied and often surprising album that is practically undersold by its "acoustic album" reputation. Not that it couldn't have been just as good had it been more restrained: "Running Out of Fantasy" and "This Sullen Welsh Heart" are fantastic proof that James requires very little around his songs to make something great, and especially "This Sullen Welsh Heart" is among one of James' best solo spots and opens the album wonderfully. Similarly, the album closes excellently: as the atmospheric instrumental "Manorbier" wonderfully bridges the acoustic sound into the aggravated electro-stomper "30-Year War", moving from Wire's internal politics to very blatantly the external and with the rage to boot, the album as a whole looks forward, showing yet another new aspect of itself while linking it to Futurology. It's a transition between two separate pairs that do not need the context to work, but the inherent qualities of which are amplified by the meta aspect.

There's a few areas where Rewind the Film falters. "Show Me the Wonder" is the obligatory single that Bradfield is bound to write under some ancient oath; the radio single that somewhat undersells the main album is the main carryover from the previous albums and a hard habit for the band to shake, and despite its eventually poignant verses and the bright horns that the song rides its hooks on, it grinds to a halt in its thumping chorus and its perky retro-styling feels at odds with the rest of the album. "3 Ways to See Despair", one of the few songs featuring James' faithful electric guitar, is the opposite as it takes an intentional stab to pair Wire's lyrics with the musical tone to match, and comes off anvilicious in its emotional heaviness - a try-hard dark night of the soul that ends up being a little corny instead. "As Holy as the Soil" is the least abrupt of the lot but it's like an awkward Sunday school original, going for a light gospel twang that maybe would have worked on Postcards From a Young Man but here is clear filler even if boasts the only Wire-vocal. The silver lining here is that part of why these songs stand up so clumsily is because the rest of the album is so well put together and natural in its skin; so the weak spots are the ones that either feel like leftovers from prior ideas or attempts to intentionally match a set tone and mood.When directly comparing it to its sibling album, you get the slight feeling that the initial batch of songs that lead to Rewind the Film were the minority of the session material and that's why you get a few songs where the lines blur between the two albums, and another couple of songs like these that probably would have ended up as b-sides if not for a need to bulk the record up a little bit more.

But the one big takeaway from Rewind the Film is that at its brightest it shines so well. It's amusing to describe a largely calm, collected and aching album as a revitalising jolt but it's exactly what Rewind the Film is - for the band and the listener. It's an audible document of the Manics brushing off the self-inflicted awkwardness of their previous years, and with that, they sound like themselves again: fearless and invested. I don't dislike the 2007-2010 period as much it seems like I do (and Journal for Plague Lovers right in the middle of it is the odd one out that doesn't quite fit in with the main criticisms I have of those years), but for the most parts it saw the Manics putting on a role and colouring by numbers, and it lacked that unpredictability the Manics had always treasured. Rewind the Film brings that spirit back again and comfortably slots in the continuum, like it had never gone away and the past couple of albums were a dream. I hate the phrase "return to form" because it implies artists should stick to their past and not take risks changing, but Rewind the Film is that risk after a series of safe bets. It's a case where that phrase really feels like it applies, because it's back to the most important aspect of the past greats: it's an album where it's clear the band put their conviction into it.

The now-standard deluxe edition of the album comes with the now-standard bonus disc of original demos and few other goodies. The demos are fine but not too interesting for the most parts - most of the songs are already fully realised and there's no interesting sketches, rather it's just rougher versions of the album tracks with placeholders over future production elements (keyboards instead of horns, etc). You can get a hint of the barebones Nebraska version album through some of them and have an idea of what it would've sounded like, but for most parts it's clear these songs were intended to be fuller works to start with. Few interesting details still remain: "Rewind the Film" and "4 Lonely Roads" feature Wire in vocals, a child choir comes out of nowhere on "3 Ways to See Despair" (and axing it was the right choice but I did not expect a child choir to appear in a demo), and the version of "30-Year War" gives an idea of what a true Rewind the Film-version of the song would have sounded like, as opposed to the duology hybrid of the album version. Far more interesting are the live songs. Capping off the hit-chasing years, the band released the singles collection National Treasures in 2011 and closed off the era with a residency at the O2 in London, playing every one of those singles. Including the ones they've deliberately ignored for years. A live album never realised and instead the band provided bulk of the gig through b-sides, free downloads and bonus material like this; and the great thing is that they didn't shy away from releasing some of the less obvious songs this way. We may never get the full gig but I'm glad we have the excellent recordings of "There By the Grace of God" and "The Love of Richard Nixon", dusted off for one night and probably never to be heard again. "Stay Beautiful" is great fun live with a full stadium audience screaming the lyrics at the band, "Revol" comes back with a vengeance with some muscle and, uh, "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough" is there and the combined charisma of Nina Persson and Bradfield still can't save it. If you're cobbling together your own live album like I am the deluxe version is sort of worth it, but the demos aren't particularly interesting this time around just due to the nature of the album.

Rating: 7/10