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.
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