Manic Attack

The new Manics single aired today and, as hinted at by Nicky Wire when he said their new album would be “one last shot at mass communication”, it’s an FM-rock holleralong. The Manics seem to be raging against the onset of being in their 40s by entering the most prolific period of their career – they’ll have released three records between May 2007 and now – and, should ‘Postcards From A Young Man’ match up to the anthemic blast of ‘(It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love’, you could also call it their most remarkably rich songwriting streak of their career too.

Whilst entrenched in the brilliance of ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’ last year, I embarked on a giddily-written ADD blog about how ‘Journal…’ had me revisiting Manics’ back catalogue in a way I hadn’t quite since ‘Know Your Enemy’ and ‘Lifeblood’ cooled my interest in the first band I properly obsessed over. But now it appears they’ve undergone one big fucking U-turn – the indelible MOR crunch of ‘Send Away The Tigers’ first proving they still had something to give AND THEN SOME and the conceptual sonic spikes of ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’ putting their undeniable brilliance and relevance, once again, in big fucking neon lights. Hope I’m not cursing it, but all the signs point towards ‘Postcards…’ living up to the stellar standards James, Nicky and Sean set down in the latter half of noughties. The Tim Roth-featuring artwork hints at something iconoclastic, its sepia tinge evoking a nostalgic gloss that suggest Wire might not just be playing the contrary bugger when he suggests this is their last big pop blowout.

The single itself certainly suggests as much; opening with a plucked riff that harks back to ‘Little Baby Nothing’’s soft-rock opening, soon it’s injected with an impeccably elegant orchestral flourish. If ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’ had them plugging back into their phaser pedals to re-create ‘The Holy Bible’’s industrial grime, this sounds somewhere between ‘Everything Must Go’’s strings-led euphoria and ‘Send Away The Tigers’’s attitude to choruses. i.e Big Ones. With Fucking Bells On. It’s a tantalising taster for the album and a sure sign that the Manics haven’t only left that late 90s, early 00s lull when they threatened to turn into a A Mature Band behind, they’ve sky-rocketed it into oblivion, revitalised, raucous and attention-grabbing in a way that, really, a band in their 40s really shouldn’t. But that’s the Manics, isn’t it? Always, wonderfully, brilliantly, doing things the wrong way round…