CD1: 1) Sleepflower; 2) From Despair to Where: 3) La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh); 4) Yourself; 5) Life Becoming a Landslide; 6) Drug Drug Druggy; 7) Roses in the Hospital; 8) Nostalgic Pushead; 9) Symphony of Tourette; 10) Gold Against the Soul; Bonus tracks: 11) Donkeys; 12) Comfort Comes; 13) Are Mothers Saints; 14) Patrick Bateman; 15) Hibernation; 16) Us Against You; 17) Charles Windsor; 18) What’s My Name (Live)
CD2: 1) Sleepflower (House in the Woods Demo); 2) From Despair to Where (House in the Woods Demo); 3) La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh) (House in the Woods Demo); 4) Yourself (Live in Bangkok); 5) Life Becoming a Landslide (House in the Woods Demo); 6) Drug Drug Druggy (House in the Woods Demo); 7) Drug Drug Druggy (Impact Demo); 8) Roses in the Hospital (House in the Woods Demo); 9) Roses in the Hospital (Impact Demo); 10) Nostalgic Pushead (House in the Woods Demo); 11) Symphony of Tourette (House in the Woods Demo); 12) Gold Against the Soul (House in the Woods Demo); 13) Roses in the Hospital (OG Psychovocal Remix); 14) Roses in the Hospital (51 Funk Salute Remix); 15) La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh) (Chemical Brothers Remix); 16) Roses in the Hospital (Filet-O-Gang Remix); 17) Roses in the Hospital (ECG Remix)
Got the b-sides, got the demos, got everything you could have from this era plus some fancy photos - not much to complain for once. Maybe a little less volume...
Key tracks: "Donkeys", "Are Mothers Saints", "Hibernation"
(This is a review of the deluxe edition of Gold Against the Soul, for the review of the actual album please click here)
Gold Against the Soul is a LOUD and HARD album, with lots of BIG RIFFS and SOARING SOLOS and CRUNCHY BASS and BELLOWING VOCALS. When preparing for the, uh, 27th anniversary reissue of the album (because by this point the Manics team isn't even pretending to have any reason or rhyme to their reissue schedule), this seems to have been the leading thought behind the project because rather than the subtler remaster job favoured for the prior albums, for this one they've turned the volume to the max. The deluxe edition of Gold Against the Soul is loud, so that you barely need to touch the volume knob to get that full-on cranked-to-11 hard rock effect reverberating through your entire apartment. Sure, the album could maybe have used a little bit of a volume boost because as with many early 1990s releases it doesn't have the most volume, but the extreme lengths taken with this reissue are ridiculous. There is a pretty solid remaster job underneath there somewhere too, but it's sometimes hard to appreciate when the music is pummeling out of your speakers.
It's kind of hilariously apt for the album's flirtations with hair metal and 80s hard rock, but it's honestly a little too much. But at least they've not touched the album's tracklist this time.
But the fans are here for the bonuses anyway, and in that regard the band have started to settle well into a standard format of b-sides on one disc, a demo runthrough of the entire record on the next and filling the gaps with miscellaneous material where apt - and it's honestly a good format. The most important part i.e. the b-sides all follow the main album in reverse chronological order, and are a great side companion to the main disc, showing the band trying out some new ideas in this generally transformative era. The melancholy torchlight song "Donkeys" and its wonderfully metallic bass as well as the dark, jagged and anxious proto-The Holy Bible roadsign "Comfort Comes" are the two fan and band favourites, and both are classics. "Are Mothers Saints" and "Hibernation" are my favourites of the lot, with the latter's effortlessly melodic nature coming across practically breezy compared to the heavy-hitting main album, and the latter not only being the era's sole primarily acoustic song and full of a gentler kind of beauty as a result, but it's also a curiously atypical piece of storytelling lyricism from the Manics that even now stands out. "Patrick Bateman" is a ludicruous chugga-chugga metal attempt that marries some genuinely great melodies to ridiculous attention-baiting lyrics ("I fucked God up the ass!"), what sounds like a children's choir backing James and a headbanger finale - it's a ridiculous song, but I love it in all its daftness. The Generation Terrorists -esque "Us Against You" is the obvious runt of the litter and sounds like a left-over from the previous sessions still awkwardly clinging around, and the two covers at the very end are serviceable but not particularly exciting.
Meanwhile the demos are once again interesting in their own way, as earlier Manics demos are wont to be. One of the key recording cues for Gold Against the Soul was emphasising the band's live sound after the clinically produced Generation Terrorists, and so not only are all the demos here full-band run-throughs rather than acoustic James solo spots, but they're all pretty close to their album versions in arrangement. The band arrived to the sessions with a clear idea in their heads, and so there aren't really many surprises in that regard: the biggest difference is with "Gold Against the Soul" having a bit more of an obvious swagger, and the somewhat hilarious Impact Studios demo of "Drug Drug Druggy" with woah-woahs, piano and handclaps in the verses giving it an almost baggy kind of feel (as an aside, the two demo versions of "Drug Drug Druggy" and the alternative tracklist found in the liner notes where it's pushed right near the front of the album give an intriguing perspective on the band obviously thinking this was one of the key tracks of the album, which is a wild idea). But it's the details where the differences lie. There's a lot of alternative lyrics throughout, and while the final album would have some orchestral embellishments and ongoing hammond organs throughout, on the demos James sticks some additional vocal harmonies in their place to some really good results for us fans of both James' vocals and vocal harmonies in general. It's a neat set of demos once more, doing what demos at their best do for the fans - they give some additional insight to the album, even if they're clearly more interesting from a contextual perspective than as something you'd actively want to listen to.
(A special shout-out goes to the demo of "Sleepflower", where the band clearly raided the nearest kitchen for its cooking pot percussion breakdown)
The remixes that take up the final section of the second disc aren't much to write about. The Chemical Brothers remix of "La Tristesse Durera" is a fairly throwaway generic 90s rock band remix, and that's about as much as anyone can say about it. The four "Roses in the Hospital" remixes are a creature onto their own: for some reason a group of remixers all decided that what the song needs is a little bit more funk and groove, and we end up with four nearly-identical remixes heavy on early 90s hip hop beats and funky swagger. They are incredibly dated time capsules, and for that reason alone there's something endearing to them even if they're hardly among the band's best remixes.
The big talking point with this particular re-release was its hard-cover, coffee table book format which gives access to countless high resolution prints of previously unreleased behind-the-scenes photos from the band's court photographer Mitch Ikeda. I'm not entirely sold that they're worth the bother that I can't fit the box in my actual music shelves (it sits all on its own opposite them, in a spare slot in a trusty Ikea Kallax that's the only shelf tall enough to deal with it), but they are a genuinely cool little visual diary of this particular period: not just the recording sessions but the moments in-between and the band's (in)famous first tour in Asia. Listening to the bravado of the album it's easy to forget that these were a group of young friends getting a taste of rock star life, and the casual and candid shots are a great contrast to the posing of the official promo footage. I still would prefer some track-by-tracks and wider written insight, but I'm more positively surprised by the photo-heavy approach for this one than I initially expected to be.
It's definitely an overpriced package (but that's my fault for buying new) and I'd ideally not want to blow my speakers up whenever I play it, but after a lot of trials and tribulations the Manics are finally hitting a comfortable groove with these reissues in their content. For the kind of fan who's even remotely interested by the ins and outs of Manics recording periods, this is absolutely worth it to get the b-sides and to some extent the demos. Gold Against the Soul itself remains one of the band's most underrated records and a flashy re-release isn't going to change the minds of those who aren't already converted, but despite its non-canonical stature this set has been treated with enough care and attention that it makes for a good appendix in a completionist collection - even if, as per usual, there's a caveat or two.
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