I'm a big fan so was always going to like this album. But I am pleasantly surprised at how much I do like it. It reminds me of their older stuff (late nineties, but not as good as early nineties… of course!)
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I'm a big fan so was always going to like this album. But I am pleasantly surprised at how much I do like it. It reminds me of their older stuff (late nineties, but not as good as early nineties… of course!)
One listen to ‘International Blue’ – the first single from Manic Street Preachers' 13th album, ‘Resistance is Futile’ – blows that thought out of the water. The single is intensely melodic, supremely confident and driven by an empathetic melancholy. It's the perfect herald for a classic Manics album that's less one last shot at mass communication and much more a record ready made for massive communion.
• Unexpectedly lyrically open, ‘Resistance is Futile’ finds the band working from an emotional palette they are not immediately associated with. From the cascading opening of ‘People Give In’ to the scattered resonance of ‘The Left Behind’, the album is very much the work of a band demanding to be heard and joined, at full volume. These are Manic Street Preachers songs written for the stage; songs to be sung against sunsets and shared in full-throated union.
• The first Manics album to be recorded at their new Door to the River studio (situated at the head of a valley just outside Newport) with long-term Manics collaborators (producer Dave Eringa and mix engineer Chris Lord-Alge), ‘Resistance is Futile’ finds the Manic Street Preachers completely reinvigorated, clearly revelling in the change of scenery. The songs play to wide-vistas and open roads, nodding to the band's past (with echoes of ‘Generation Terrorists’ chaotic ambition of and the unrelenting melodies that run right through ‘This Is My Truth…’) while drawing a route map for the future.
• While not overly fixated by the current news cycle, the album does
obliquely confront subjects such as predatory tech companies, the impact of the
2016 referendum on personal relationships, and the nagging ennui inspired by
modern party politics. Inspiration across the record comes from the deep
vastness of Yves Klein's International Klein Blue, the deaths of both the
famous and the anonymous (David Bowie and Vivian Maier), the city of Liverpool
and Dylan and Caitlin Thomas' intoxicating relationship. As Wire says of the
record, “In such a fractured and dysfunctional world, we found it impossible
to avoid the idea of art as a
hiding place and a weapon. Memory, loss and a sense of grace loom large over the
record. To quote Phil Ochs, ‘In such ugly times the only true protest is
beauty.’”
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