Manic Street Preachers – Letting ‘Lifeblood’ Breathe
The time after the release of a Greatest Hits compilation can often be rather odd for artists. Not only does that concept have a faint hint of the best being behind you, but it also asserts the ingredients behind your previous success. In eighty minutes, it tells the world what you’re best at. So what follows once everything is laid bare? More of the same or a complete reinvention, normally. Assuming that exercise isn’t simply the final reverberations of a contract death rattle, then it can offer a position of confidence and consolidation from which to try things. And so it proved with the Manic Street Preachers.
In the studio, the band commenced work on their seventh studio album by repeatedly rejecting their first or even second ideas for each song. They knew how to write a Manics track, but they wanted to tweak the formula and ponder the what ifs. That conscious choice is evident when feasting on the treasure trove of early versions included on the third disc of a new twentieth anniversary edition of ‘Lifeblood’, their somewhat misunderstood but utterly beautiful 2004 record. In 2007, James Dean Bradfield described it as “an album where you feel as if you’re invading its privacy when you listen to it.” There’s certainly never been a better time to get to know it.
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In 2004, public perception was inextricably tied to the act of self-sabotage that was ‘The Love Of Richard Nixon’ being chosen as the first single at a time when physical formats still really mattered. It’s not a bad song, of course, it’s just deeply odd. The title, lyrics, samples and – most problematically for the casual purchasers of the ‘Forever Delayed’ collection – the synths seemed like a provocation to some. Which is, of course, typically them. It’s especially hilarious now to look back at Nicky Wire telling the Belfast Telegraph around release that, “we wanted to make a record for 10-year-olds and 60-year-olds. ‘Know Your Enemy’ was a record for ourselves, but we just wanted to make a record for everyone.” This was the year when ‘everyone’ wanted ‘Call On Me’ by Eric Prydz, DJ Caspar’s ‘Cha Cha Slide’, Eamon and a reissue of Peter Andre’s ‘Mysterious Girl’.
With an unashamedly all-in video and promotional campaign, as well as a 3-for-£5 deal on the CD and DVD singles, the label – who had insisted on it as lead single – got them, briefly, to number two before it plummeted twenty places the following week. This wasn’t the ideal launchpad for the parent long-player and the fact it had been conspicuously leaked prior to release also didn’t help. At a time when prestige was afforded those who could illegally upload hotly anticipated titles and forum culture meant most things got one listen before a hyperbolic opinion was dispatched into the ether, elegiac Manics on synths didn’t get the warmest reaction. Having been accustomed to albums charting near the very top of the pops, ‘Lifeblood’ crawled to number thirteen and spent only one week in the all-important Top 40. Whatever their views on the music, it’s clear that this public disinterest played a significant part in the band’s initial aversion to the era.
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In 2021, Wire openly admitted to Record Collector that, “it was such a catastrophic commercial disaster that it let us down. It just felt like the death of the first phase of the band really, like we had to rebuild it.” You have to love the idea of the album itself letting them down and Bradfield continued, “it didn’t respect our ambition of still competing commercially and so being part of the cultural landscape and not ghettoising itself.” While their openness about the magnitude of such things to them as pop scholars remains deeply charming, it’s odd to think that they had such a wilfully, intellectually conceptual approach to the recordings but didn’t really brace for how it might play with the public. It’s especially curious given their desire to patch up the impact on their standing caused by its chaotic predecessor, ‘Know Your Enemy’, described in The Scotsman by Wire as a, “deeply flawed, highly enjoyable folly.”
While early reaction was volubly divided, the fans are old enough for ‘Lifeblood’ now. A band who had accelerated through so much, propelled by events in their mid-twenties, were understandably reflecting from the position of imminent middle-age. As many of those who love them most find themselves muddling through the travails of the same expansive time of life, it feels like ‘Lifeblood’ might be just what they need. It’s the band of ‘Futurology’, but it’s also the band of ‘Everything Must Go’. There is as much focus on beauty here as on ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’, if not even more. Adjectives like glacial, cold and clinical abounded around the time of its release, but that is to miss its emotional transparency. Remember, this came after Cuba, Castro and the scuzzy onslaught of an album that the band only wrestled into shape in the autumn of 2022.
‘Lifeblood’ was the starting point of the more varied textures that would follow in their music of the past two decades. Knowing when to ease off the bombast and how to present soulful, emotive ideas was a process most intently learnt in the writing of this record. Listening to those demos, it’s really noticeable how Bradfield hums the arrangements on nascent run-throughs of ‘I Live To Fall Asleep’ and ‘Cardiff Afterlife’, whether picking out guitar solos or harmonica lines. The melodic deftness is pitched perfectly across the twelve tracks.
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Some of the Manics’ finest moments can be found in these grooves, most notably the reflection on their youth in opener ‘1985’, a track that sets the sonic palette for what follows so perfectly and Sean Moore acknowledges should have been a single. Just think how those initial perceptions of the whole album might have been different with this slow-building, wistfully anthemic statement of intent as the first exposure. “We’ve realised there’s no going back,” sings James as Wire’s lyrics tap into what it is and always has been to be in this band. ‘A Song For Departure’ and ‘Solitude Sometime Is’ further explore mid-paced elder statesman territory in impeccable fashion.
There’s a special quality to ‘Glasnost’ too, closer to normal service with its chiming guitars, perhaps, but polished serenely to a position of grace from which they can ask, “when did life get so, get so complicated? When did life start, start accelerating?” The title isn’t a word that’s most naturally suited to a pop chorus, but its metaphorical meaning – invoking the policy of increased openness around government business in the Soviet Union – fits neatly with their professed desire to rein in the rage and produce a less angry, more personal record.
This is, arguably, further reinforced by a song so melodically sumptuous that some find it too slight when put against so much of their catalogue. However, the delicate charm in ‘I Live To Fall Asleep’ is an important part of a resigned meditation on Wire’s love of rest and retreating home – “serene, alone, happy” – which may well hint at Richey, but seems pretty resolutely about the acceptance of the man he has become after the calamities and excesses of youth. ‘Cardiff Afterlife’ pulled together the transparency and acceptance, seeming to serve as a final farewell to the band’s fourth member. It was an attempt at protecting their memories of Richey from the media story around his disappearance: “Yet I kept my silence, your memory is still mine.”
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The hasty conclusion of the track was, perhaps, originally designed to symbolise a door being slammed painfully shut, even if the evidence that they weren’t ready to move on was soon to be revealed, though not immediately announced, on a 2005 EP entitled ‘God Save The Manics’ that many believe contained the intended b-sides for the third single that never came after ‘Empty Souls’ was shoddily shuffled into the January deadzone. Although only partially evident at the time, the band had become amenable to exploring Richey’s legacy, both in Wire’s lyrics and the return to his notebooks that would result in 2009’s excoriating ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’. ‘Picturesque’, from that scarce EP, was the first sign, melding phrasing from what would become ‘All Is Vanity’ and ‘Doors Closing Slowly’. It’s a song with almost no bottom end, but their livelier instincts restored, desperately in need of a remaster though presumably consigned to history given the eventual arrival of the constituent parts and so not included here.
Nevertheless, the second disc collates the b-sides and Japanese bonus tracks from the era, the latter having never previously had a release outside of the country, further victims of the decision not to make it to a trio of singles. It’s a wonderfully mixed bag, starting at ‘Askew Road’, with a Richey sample and some reminiscences on the band’s early years living with their late manager Philip Hall and his wife, legendary PR guru, Terri. There’s the rough and tumble of ‘Voodoo Polaroids’ with a raggedy, distorted vocal that harks back to the era just departed, which is oddly catchy almost despite itself. ‘Quarantine (In My Place)’ is a classic Manics b-side with silly woo-hoo backing vocals, insistent acoustic guitar and occasional JDB vocal roars. The Motowny verses and general delivery echo their triumphant cover of ‘Out Of Time’ from 2002’s Warchild ‘1Love’ album.
‘Dying Breeds’ is arguably the template upon which Wire’s solo efforts have been built ever since. Stuttering drums, muffled vocals and aching guitar coalesce wonkily as the lyrics wonder “I believe in you, do you believe in me?” It reflects upon a couple watching the world change around them and feels like another celebration of the lyricist’s delight in domesticity. ‘The Soulmates’ is the more thrusting of the two Japanese bonus tracks, but your correspondent holds a soft spot for ‘Antarctic’. It fits with the late-Nineties/early-Noughties b-side tendency towards melodic sheen mixed with choppier, angular rhythms and Bradfield clearly enjoys letting rip in the final third after keeping the riffs in check. Gently beautiful, it really grows as a track over time and, for many, this will be their first exposure to it. Two new remixes of ‘1985’ close out the disc, one by Steven Wilson which embraces the Eighties’ tendency towards extended versions on the 12” by pulling on various threads to spacey effect and the other from Gwenno, who contorts it into a nightmarish psychedelic onslaught.
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The demos may not be destined for frequent listening, but the contrasting versions of ‘The Love Of Richard Nixon’ prove Bradfield’s point about forcing themselves to try, try and try again, the latter highlighting the far safer route. In the main, they reveal the wonderful production of the final versions, although it’s intriguing to hear the Tony Visconti mixes of the trio of tunes for which he was eventually credited as producer. Fans will also be thrilled to get the invigorated Maida Vale session versions of the five album tracks performed for Steve Lamacq. ‘…Nixon’ hops along at quite a lick and ‘A Song For Departure’ has a post-punk tautness that suggests yet another possible direction.
Bradfield has, despite commercial disappointments, tended to look back on the process with fondness “I loved making ‘Lifeblood’, because it was interesting. I loved chasing these other versions of what we were trying to do.” It’s also worth noting that it hasn’t suffered from any of the divisive historical revisionism that was applied to reissues of ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’, ‘Know Your Enemy’ and ‘Send Away The Tigers’, suggesting Wire has once again made his peace with the record which he delighted described at the time of release as, “a concept album about death.” While the remaster may be marginally louder than the original, it isn’t crushed and some of the fine-tuning better serves these majestic songs. An essential party of their story, ‘Lifeblood’ now stands its best chance of being afforded the widespread recognition it deserves.
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‘Lifeblood’ 20th anniversary edition will be released on April 12th – order it online now.
Words: Gareth James
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