Manic Street Preachers - Generation Terrorists
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Free Music Notes for Generation Terrorists
Free Music Review: Worms in the garden more real than McDonalds?
Hit: 4 Stars
This is the album the band promised would outsell everything that came before it and spark a revolution akin to Punk '77 that'd put an end to Madchester and safe, limp-wristed rock bands. And if that weren't a bold enough claim, they also planned to announce their retirement after these delusions of grandeur were achieved (they weren't, of course). The album comes off like a highbrow, militantly (incoherently) left-wing Guns 'n' Roses, with some mega-catchy hooks ("You Love Us," "Slash 'n' Burn," "Motorcycle Emptyness"). If the album has any serious flaws, though, they're to be found in their lyrics: I don't really understand what messages the band intended to convey in their songs.(My guess is that they're "open to interpretation" like Dylan's or Wire's lyrics.) The subject matter seems to fluctuate between half-baked pleas for socialism (remember guys: Welshman Aneurin Bevan spearheaded the NHS, which eventually had 700,000 British men, women, and children queuing up for surgery in 1977), depression, and nihilism. In other words, the Manic Street Preachers manage to put a verbose twist on nothing new.
Tough to find, but worth it if you do.
Free Music Review: Fun but inconsequential
Hit: 3 Stars
Generation Terrorists was originally hyped as a cross between the Clash, Public Enemy, and Guns and Roses. But, a fan of any of these artists can easily see that GT fell short of that by quite a bit. The lyrics itself are great. Mostly shotgun blasts of Situationist slogans, political inventive, and rebel chic. Often the lyrics comes across as shallow, adolescent, and self-impressed; but, that's precisely the point. For a band to forbode greatness, it's debut record must have the hubris of rock'n'roll youth. And for an album so full of itself, MANY a trenchant political and philosophical insight can be found.Then, where is the problem? The music. Even working in glam rock, it's still possible to create still brutal, brilliant music. Guns and Roses have done it again and again. But,Generation Terrorists is primarily slick, heavy hair metal, more Skid Row than GNR. It's well done, with plenty of hooks, catchy melodies and riffs, and solid musicianship. In fact, if the lyrics were more conventional, this would be bloody great in the car. Nevertheless, it doesn't transcend its limitations and sells the lyrics short by alot.
There are significant exceptions, however. You have the epic "Little Baby Nothing" - their most succesful attempt to depict a femninist archetype (in this case, porn star), as tragic victim. Then, you have the truly magnificent "Motorcycle Emptiness." It must be the first power ballad about cultural boredom, and it completely works. If anything, at this point in the game, the Manics already were gifted in conveying "beautiful sadness", in creating memorable, moving anthems to existential despair. This is simply one of the finest anthems ever written in the 90s.
So, all in all, GT stands not as a taste of things to come, but the conceits that the Manics would attempt (and bittersweetly succeed) to create greatness from. On its own, it's a pretty good hair rawk album to strike the poses with.
Free Music Review: Were they nuts??
Hit: 3 Stars
An incredibly bold debut release, completely going against the dance/'lad' culture in the UK which prevailed at the time of its release, "Generation Terrorists" is a mixture of The Clash, Guns and Roses and the pretension of many of the writers which the sleevenotes namecheck. It never lived up to its promise, and is a little (i.e. 6 tracks!) too long, but has some great moments. Why didn't they put their excellent single 'Motown Junk' on there instead of the rather terrible 'Natwest-Barclays-Midlands-Lloyds??'.Free Music Review: Super Single
Hit: 2 Stars
Sixth form poetry and trashy guitars flower briefly into rock'n'roll genius with Motorcycle Emptiness. They should have left this track off (a) till their fans were ready for it and (b) because it makes the rest of the album sound terrible.
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