The veteran Welsh rockers’ 15th studio album delivers everything you’d expect - direct lyrics on big social and political themes, huge, surging melodies and powerful choruses, variously wistful, playful, angry, sincere, and even includes a slanted dedication to the Smiths with one of their strongest for years - if you’re a fan of classic Manics, this delivers. It opens with an angry, thumping title track, lyrics as ever penned by Nicky Wire, and here delivery them, taking a swipe at online bullshit in a dystopian landscape: “As I enter this page I feel we meet together / Or maybe not / Maybe as we hurtle down the avalanche / To the cul-de-sac of a non-descript nowhere land / Where J.G. Ballad once took a stand”. But what follows, Decline & Fall, is classic Preachers – pacy, emotional, powerful with a cascading piano riff to bring in James Dean Bradfield’s distinctive, high rock voice with that characteristic defiant optimism in dark times: “I know our time has come and gone / At least we blazed a trail and shone / These tiny molecules governed by rules / Littlе atoms that only / Leave clues … Society used to be my worst enemy, now I want to build a small one for you and me”.
The Manics have always had more of a “tell than show” rather than the vice versa lyrical approach. Age and time-passing seem to be a recurring theme, such as Brushstrokes of Reunion, or Deleted Scenes, in which there’s the declaration: “I wanna be in love with the man I used to be, in a decade I felt free.” But perhaps the most memorable track is Dear Stephen, a plea to a certain Stephen Patrick Morrissey, formerly of the Smiths, and the huge disappointment he has become with his wilful right-wing controversies of the past few years. A hero to many, including Wire and the rest of the band in his Smiths and earlier solo works, this song mimics the signature guitar sound of the untainted Johnny Marr, while addressing the other big Smith as follows with reference to songs, lyrics and a favourite poet of Morrissey’s youth too: “ You're, you're still my bad habit / My, a dark little secret / My illicit unseen drug / My secret hidden love / Dear Stephen, please come back to us/ I believe in repentance and forgiveness/ It's so easy to hate, it takes guts to be kind … To paraphrase one of your heartbreak lines / I'm still ill, I'm cursed to stay/ Under your spell for all my days / I'm still a prisoner to you and Larkin / Even as your history darkens.” With a variety of other strong tracks, such as People Ruin Paintings, or the angry OneManMilitia, the trio have still got plenty to say. Out on Sony.
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