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.
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