Manic Street Preachers - Lifeblood
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.74 You Save: $8.75 (60%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.82 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Lifeblood
Free Music Review: A nice new direction.
Hit: 4 Stars
This is a great album from the Manic Street pREACHERS, unfortunatly in New Zealand good rock n roll music does not get recognised very well, with the music scene and radio dominated by dreadful loud and noisy and untuneful nz bands and pop artists.
Its actually a much better, and a better lsiten than Everything must go, which is actually quite an overated album, and is certainly not their best.
At least theres still some good bands around who know how to make a proper noise.
Free Music Review: Not yet bled to death
Hit: 3 Stars
Twelve years ago it would have been difficult to imagine that public and critics alike would still be debating the merits of the Manics in 2004. Lifeblood is the Welsh band's seventh studio album (as well as greatest hits Forever Delayed and B-Sides counterpart Lipstick Traces) and their fourth as a three-piece after the disappearance of lyricist/founder member Richey Edwards in 1995. Initially dismissed as aping The Clash's rhetoric and Guns `N Roses' power chords, in their 2004 incarnation it is only the rhetoric that remains.
Sweeping synth-driven opener 1985 quickly deals with the name-checking, from the predictable (Orwell, Nietchze, The Smiths) to the bizarre (Torville & Dean!). It is also a deceptively anthemic beginning to a set showcasing a more refined, reserved group. What is revealed further on is more akin to the orchestral longing which pre-occupied much of This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, but lacking that album's grandiose bombast. If they've made a career out of extremity and surprises, it seems they are now resigned to growing old gracefully.
James Dean Bradfield's impassioned vocals have worked in the past to draw listeners closer, in response to the elitist literary stance, sarcasm and spite of the band's lyrics that seem to aim at keeping non-devotees at arm's length. Lead single The Love of Richard Nixon, however, sees an unusual parity between the coldness of Bradfield's delivery and the ironic tone of the message. For a band always reliable in delivering powerful singles, it hints at the end of an era.
Musically there are strong nods to `80s synthesizer-based groups, although they are perhaps more oblique than some revivalist bands currently plying their trade (The Killers come to mind). The album's melancholy highlight can be found in Live To Fall Asleep, which most perfectly reflects the band's description of "elegiac pop". The other side of this coin can be found in a mid-set slump that culminates in the turgid ballads Emily and Glasnost.
Nicky Wire still manages to create lyrics that run from sublime eloquence ("Two minutes silence in a century of screams"- Fragments) to ridiculous couplets ("Collapsing like the twin towers, falling down like April showers"- Empty Souls). This is, however, par for the course when listening to any of his work, and upholds his reputation as an enigma and "intellectual snob".
This year sees the re-release of The Holy Bible, the last tragic word of Richey Edwards in the band and the high-water mark of their artistic ambition. It would be futile to attempt any comparison between this and their latest work, however, finally it seems the band have allowed the spirit of their lost fourth member to hover over their work. At first listen, Cardiff Afterlife follows the general route of the set, melancholic loveliness, meandering on drabness. A closer listen reveals explicit reference to Edward's lyrics on The Holy Bible's Die In The Summertime and the profound effect of his disappearance on the others ("The paralysed future, the past sideways crawl"). The result is a rare song where both the lyric's emotional honesty and the musicality draw in the listener.
This album is by no means a death knell,even if there is the same overall sense of underwhelming that has characterised the output since their mid-career peaks The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go.
Free Music Review: Growing old gracefully, but lacking any real fire
Hit: 3 Stars
Lifeblood is a sheeny and impressive, well-executed pop album. It has tunes, immediacy and James Dean Bradfield's vocals shine. But it slips too often towards the middle of the road. Things start well with '1985' which explodes into a vivid, technicolor chorus of heart-swelling proportions, like a better produced version of something from Everything Must Go. Nothing here is quite as good as the opener, however, although there are some notable tracks: 'A Song For Departure' is a yearning track with a textured, yearning chorus, a cousin of "Ready For Drowning'; 'To Repel Ghosts' is a propellent track, one of the few here to get some pace going, that shimmers beautifully; 'Always/Never' grabs the attention with the unprecedented introduction of slap bass, sounding like Low-era Bowie; and 'Cardiff Afterlife' is a spine-tingling lament replete with harmonica and an unsettling, jagged chorus.
Nevertheless, the Manics are becoming a classic rock band. Most of the track mentioned above still have a sort of MOR rock sheen to them. Despite Bradfield's beautiful vocals, they are lacking a passion and intensity. What's worse is that the other half of the album is truly unremarkable. None of the tracks are terrible, but songs like 'Fragments' and 'Emily' sound like B-sides at best. Neither of the singles (the disco-pop of 'The Love of Richard Nixon' or the stadium rock-pop of 'Empty Souls') shine like true Manics classics. The slightly disappointing thing is that the Manics could have made a much better album. Of course no-one was expecting them to make another 'Holy Bible' - that is unquestionably their best album by miles and always will be, and could never be returned to either stylistically or in terms of quality this late into a career. But recent tracks - 'There By The Grace of God', 'Door To The River', 'Everything Will Be', had a complex, electronic feel to them that isn't a million miles away from Lifeblood, but just fall on the right side of the line between graceful and boring.
The relief, on the other hand, is that the Manics haven't attempted to do something they can't. The political polemic, enormously tired by the musically adventurous, excellent at times, but inconsistent and lyrically shambolic 'Know Your Enemy', is largely absent here, with a space made for the music to be important. Equally, the music is never embaressing, as it was at times on 'Know Your Enemy' (and, lest you forget, their first two albums), nor does it attempt to be vitriolic when there is no vitriol left. Indeed, in their mid-30s, perhaps this is the best we can expect from the Manics - they are growing old gracefully. But it just doesn't have the fire of the previous recordings; not only 'The Holy Bible', but even the passionately anthemic 'Design For Life'. Often, the Manics could be any other large-scale rock band, and equally they would appeal to the fans of any of those bands - they have, indeed, joined the catagory of classic rock - not for the kids any more, but for your aunt. This is respectable, clean, impressive and pleasent. But were the Manics ever meant to be any of the above? Isn't it better to burn out than to fade away?
Free Music Review: About time too
Hit: 3 Stars
Its been other three years since new Manics material, and the train crash which was 'Know your Enemy'. So have the Manics of the past which produced the dark Holy Bible and the anthem ridden 'Everything Must Go'? No. However this does not make this a bad album at all, far from it. It kicks off with the brilliant '1985', which is the best track on the album by far. What follows is 'The Love of Richard Nixon' which is a good song but does sound very out of place on this album. Track three is 'Empty Souls' which is another highlight of the album. then sadly this album does what 'This is my truth, tell me yours' does. It finishes with nine average and below avearge songs. Higlights of these are 'Song for Departure', 'Glasnot', 'Solitude Sometimes Is' and 'Cardiff Afterlife'. Overall it is really an album for hardcore fans and people who enjoy bands like Keane, Travis and Coldplay, also may enjoy it. Not a classic, but neither is it bad.Free Music Review: is this George Michael?
Hit: 3 Stars
this is the worst album by the manics which means it's not all that bad but it's missing something, it's too pop and doesn't rock enough, i really liked "know your enemy", thought it was a great album along with their other previous releases, to me this is like a weak pop album, it's a nice late night album, guaranteed to make you sleep.