Bled dry (Lifeblood - Manic Street Preachers)

Member Name: mo79

Product:	Lifeblood - Manic Street Preachers
Date:	19/01/06 (217 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 'Solitudes Sometimes Is' is okay, has a uniform feel.

Disadvantages: Much of the album!

And so it goes like this: great record + tragedy = auto promotion leading to reverence...This is what happened to Manic Street Preachers in the mid 90's, the juncture that preserved the somewhat punk from the descent into comfortable Brit pop adoption.

There was a time when I was quite interested in the Welsh band (and admittedly like many it wasn't before '96) but if I'm to be honest their stuff prior to The Holy Bible is as hit and miss as the records from the late 90's (this included). The fuel that appears to keep them going is: strength of brand plus a fairly cemented fan base =ing laziness and indifference.

Lifeblood sees the Manics return with more focus to their pop 90's sound. That in itself was a good indicator to fans before release as it was clear from 'til recent experiments that the desire to be more abrasive was more revisionist and mechanical rather than youthful and methodical...Trouble is that the final evidence is an album that fits perfectly for Woolworths aisles, on low volume. They'd now become more dull than ever.

The slightly electronic direction was predicted from the greatest hits single 'There By The Grace Of God', but make no mistake – despite nods to British electronica bands they serve no justice to any of their influences. In 9/10 cases it's suspect when guitar bands go electronic; the other way around is a bit more successful.

First single 'The Love Of Richard Nixon' proves this without any evidence: New Order without any shred of thrill. And furthermore the band who are notable for some interesting sleeve designs before are now settling for meaningless bland. Though I suppose you can't package MOR any other way...

And then the rest of the 12 track album doesn't bring any surprises. I suppose it's only upside is that the songs are uniform in theme and sound.
Despite Tony (Bowie) Visconti's production and beforehand talk of phenomenal playing, I can say with ease that there's nothing monumental about the playing at all. Sure it's accomplished but there's no soul. Other keywords mentioned were 'Motown chops' – possibly in reference to the un-exciting bass sound on 'A Song For Departure'.
James Dean Bradfield's voice is welcome as usual but singing more Nick Jones 6th form poetry lets things further down, and neither is there much interesting beat work from Sean Moore. Production is far too polished too; all those raw and edgy bits that give music a bit of soul have been clipped off harshly. It's not worth wasting adjectives on '1985' (again New Order lite), and there's not much difference in a vast number of almost David Gray numbers ('Empty Souls', 'I Love To Fall Asleep', 'Emily', 'Glasnost', 'Fragments').

Beyond a handful of listens I could not go back to this album. I tried but it's just not enjoyable. The style tried here is something better achieved by bands like Travis and Coldplay – both I do not like too. And I'm sure the more hardcore Manics fans keep a CD sized gap between this and the older records. Even 'Know Your Enemy' was better. I thought that was rubbish also.

Perhaps the only song that made my eardrums happy for a bit is 'Solitudes Sometimes Is', which is as beautiful as any one of the band's early good ballads. The rest is simply a plodding mix of light sounds and themes. For an acceptable album title like Lifeblood, the album is totally anemic. If it's the sign of things to come I think they'd do their fans a favour by disregarding this album and end, stating that their compilations were the last releases.

Summary: Lucky album no. 7? I think not!