Missed The 50: Manic Street Preachers

Missed The 50:
Manic Street Preachers
‘Postcards From A Young Man’
(Columbia)

Hands up all those Fly writers who didn’t vote for ‘Postcards From A Young Man’ in our end of year album poll. SLAAAAAAP. You bastards deprived one of my favourite records of the year – by one of my favourite bands – of a place in the Top 50. It was a painful process as editor. Our Top 50 took form just as I’d hoped – Foals at the top, high places for These New Puritans, Arcade Fire and Everything Everything – but then grew some decidedly risqué limbs at the last, the not-for-me-but-cherished-by-our-writers likes of Los Campesinos!, Avi Buffalo, Zola Jesus and Male Bonding all taking a place whilst the Manics were sidelined. The Manics, one of the best bands Britain’s produced since I was born 29 years ago, sidelined. The Manics, as ruthlessly relevant as ever, sidelined. The Manics, back in their peak, big-chorused, slick-riffed pomp, sidelined. Honestly – WHAT. IS. POINT?

Granted, maybe ‘Postcards…’ came too soon on the back of the thrillingly feral, conceptual neo-classic ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’. But, actually, bollocks to that, it’s no excuse – a band shouldn’t be punished when they’re in the midst of an incessantly creative purple patch. ‘Postcards…’ is like an album from a different band to the creators of ‘Journal…’, anyway. Whilst that was all seething industrial rage-rock, ‘Postcards…’ is all about the big fucking singalong. Sure, there’s more to Nicky Wire’s barbed lyrics than that, but it’s the dispatched-with-aplomb choruses that take centrestage on the Manics’ 10th record.

Its lead single, ‘(It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love’ is up there with the Manics’ bombastic best, an effortless, energetic glide to its 3 and a half minutes displaying their ability to craft perfectly-pitched pop songs when they want to. Plus, it provided my personal radio moment of the year when all-round berkatron Richard Madeley declared on his Radio 2 show that, “well, I gotta shay, that’sh the besht rock riff in the chartsh at the moment.” Good enough for Madeley, good enough for me. Indeed, the first half of the album is a masterclass in indelible, irascible hooks and six-string explosions, the swell of strings around James Dean Bradfield’s militant, melancholic hollers at the climax of the title track as good as anything they’ve ever done. The soulful sadness of ‘Some Kind Of Nothingness’ (which, I’ll concede, does sound a bit like Robbie Williams) is exhilarating, whilst ‘Hazelton Avenue’ encapsulates the whole record; a vital, adrenaline blast of stronger-than-Arnie melodies and swirling nostalgia.

Sure, the second half fails to live up to the utter brilliance of the first six tracks, but still contains some corkers; the vitriolic seethe of ‘All We Want Is Entertainment’, the riffed-up stadia-rock of the Duff McKagan-featuring ‘A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun’… as I listen to the album again to write this blog, I can’t believe how our writers could get it so, so wrong. ‘Postcards From A Young Man’ is a thrilling sign of continued excellence from one of the UK’s most important bands ever and its exclusion from The Fly’s Top 50 Albums of 2010 has me thinking something very unManics indeed – that socialism, well, it really fucking sucks sometimes.