Carl - check your emails

Oooh… I’m onto it…

Niiiiiiiiiiice.

That could ALMOST be off The Holy Bible.

You seen the album cover art yet?

I have sir, and in a bizarre twist of fate it is almost identical to a cover I made back in January after we heard Jenny Saville would be contributing an original painting for the cover. Follow the link below to see:

http://www.foreverdelayed.org.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=1600733#post1600...

It’s a Manics forum called Forever Delayed and in the thread discussing the new album I posted my idea for an album cover using a Jenny Saville painting. Everyone seemed to really like it. So imagine my shock when the ACTUAL artwork was revealed! :P

[IMG]http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e203/neandercarl/jfpl.jpg[/IMG]

The funniest thing ever is the one done in Paint a few posts down.

Btw I’m not really liking Peeled Apples that much. Lyrically it’s decent but it’s hardly a memorable song, aside from the chorus sounding like the verse of Temptation by Heaven 17 (and covered by all and sundry). I suppose it’s a bit like Freedom of Speech…but more power rock style. I wanted them to be more sparse this time around. Maybe the rest of the record (in all its mental-track-titled glory!) will be.

I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one, Monkey. I think it’s a fantastic somng and I think Albini’s production is sparse whilst at the same time giving the guitars room to breathe. Nothing like the muddy production of Know Your Enemy era. But yeah, the chorus does sound like ‘Temptation’ at first :D But after 40 listens, it doesn’t and the track just comes alive. A real grower and a damn good starting track for an album methinks.

Going to buy my ticket on Friday to see them in June at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall. It’ll be the 4th time I’ve seen them at that venue, so it’s fast become my spiritual home for Manics gigs! :D

*weeps*

So, Richey and Carl: is it going to be a simple Register Office or a full church do for you two?

> So, Richey and Carl: is it going to be a simple Register Office or a full church do for you two?

I can only hope don’t use the Forum to organise it.

I’m a bit disappointed with Peeled Apples. After all the hype, it is basically Manics by the numbers - America, capitalism, advertising images, big chorus. It’s fine but it’s not in the same league as Your Love Alone. We’ve heard most of it before really and Nicky’s written songs that have said the same after Richey’s been missing.

Strangely, the song sounds like the next stage after Send Away the Tigers - a totally natural transition. So what seemed a nice gesture in not releasing any singles makes little sense after I’ve heard this song. It’s not different, it’s not commercially unviable, it’s just a pretty routine Manics song.

I hope the album is a lot different that Peeled Apples.

grrr

oooooh i can post again!

> oooooh i can post again!

There’s been a horrible mistake.

> *weeps*

Shit. Sorry Richey, that wasn’t meant to be a dig at you btw. Just a generally wallowing in self-pity over other people enjoying Manics gigs.

I doubt I’ll make it to any of the gigs on this mini-tour… 9 dates and not one of them back at home base in South Wales! Hopefully they’ll play Cardiff when they go on a full tour later this year, I’ll catch them then.

Haven’t seen them since they were touring Know Your Enemy (well a preview gig for the album at Cardiff Coal Exchange) but I did see Bradfield perform solo at Cardiff Uni a year or two back.

I saw the Manics last in December 2007. Saw them 3 times in total in 2007. Overall, I’ve seen them live 6 times so the gig in June will be my 7th Manics gig and the 4th time I’ve seen them at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall.

And there it is, fact fans!!

You’re ahead of me, but well behind my mate (whose first Manics gig was when they were still a four-piece promoting TheHoly Bible, at some bandstand in Porthcawl town centre!)

Saw in the year 2000 at the Manic Millenium in Cardiff, saw them showcase KYE at Coal Exchange with Steve Lamacq (sp?) in 2001, saw them again in Nottingham when I lived there, and saw James perform a solo gig in Cardiff Uni.

Richey, you may appreciate this… when James asked the audience if they had any requests in this fairly small venue, my mate asked - tongue-in-cheek - for Suicide Alley (a track I don’t think they’ve performed live in probably close to two decades). Well, James laughed, grabbed his guitar and launched into Suicide Alley…

for about 30 seconds lol.

ha! Same way he always teases us with ‘Sleepflower’ whenever I see them :D Or the time I saw them at Edinburgh and Nicky played the bass line intro to ‘Archives Of Pain’ hehe

Christ, Richey, how can they justify letting Nicky Wire sing AGAIN on this album??

Carl?

You should go back to that name.

Wow. That’s old.

And that’s me.

Do you happen to post at Wrestlecrap at all?

I may have done once or twice. Regular reader though virtually since it launched.

Oh wow. I was at the Wolves gig. I travelled from Manchester because they werent playing round here this year and Im gonna make the trip there every year they play there now. Brilliant gig. Best I’ve ever seen them and I think thats about the 7th or 8th time I have.

Richey - I notice you post over on Forever Delayed. Would you be able to let me know whats in the Sound and Vision section. You know, that horrible elitist bit that they dont let you look at unless you dedicate your life to FD.

Favourite Manic’s fan story No1. Karl goes to watch them play in Wales and writes ‘For Ryhl’ on his arm. Genius. Favourite Manic’s fan story no2. My mate does the same thing in Manchester but his eyeliner pen runs out halfway through ‘For Real’ making him pro-Religious Education.

Carl - check your emails again.

> Favourite Manic’s fan story No1. Karl goes to watch them play in Wales and writes ‘For Ryhl’ on his arm.

Almost.

It was Nottingham, and it was on a T-Shirt. I’ve still got the T-shirt. If the last set of gigs had been around now I’d have gone again. As it is I’ll have to wait a bit.

Jacque - curl your emails.

Knit one, pearl one, drop one, curl one…

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail, upgrade it.
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick, erase it…

Push a Push-Pop

Get your rocks off, get your rocks off, honey.

There’s a delicious irony that a thread about the Manics has spun off into random
sloganeering.

New Manics album time again…

ANNA FRIEL and MICHAEL SHEEN in the new video. That is pretty impressive, Sony must be pretty excited by the new album.

And Tim Roth on the cover, I believe…

> Sony must be pretty excited by the new album.

Well so am I. As long as there’s better material than ‘It’s Not War…’ on it. It’s the kind of Manics track I hate where I only want to listen to it a few times, you know you’re not gonna get anything else out of it. Considering they’re one of my favourite bands it saddens me that there’s so much more I’d rather listen to before putting them on. Including the new Tom Jones Praise & Blame album and Eliza Doolittle (who I love!).

So it saddens you that you’d rather listen to something that you love?

Congratulations! You are today’s definition of ‘emo’.

Quite clearly he meant that it saddens him that a band who are capable of so much better, and are one of his favourites, are producing music that comes in second place to the likes of Doolittle.

I kinda agree. After three bland, disappointing albums (This Is My Truth, Know Your Enemy, Lifeblood) the Manics proved with Send Away The Tigers that they are still capable of producing fantastic albums. Then came Journal (which I kinda neglected really, I think I only listened to it the once) which harkened back to the Holy Bible era. So it’s disheartening to hear a track like It’s Not War which clearly evokes the bland Lifeblood era which I was certainly hoping they had left behind.

> the Manics proved with Send Away The Tigers that they are still capable of producing fantastic albums.

I liked it but no way is it better than the 3 records you mentioned. Also, Journal for Plague Lovers eclipsed it IMO, the perfect antidote to the big bombast Manics stuff like ‘Autumnsong’. Considering SATT was obviously supposed to be a more immediate and commercial record it took me ages to get into it at all compared with all of 2 seconds it took with Journal… I hate ‘Winterlovers’ and that pointless cover of ‘Working Class Hero’. They could have covered ANYTHING for a secret track so why the heck that? And it’s a naff version too.

Bar the odd track I reckon ‘Lifeblood’ is really underrated. The ‘…Richard Nixon’ single was definitely one of their biggest wtf moments (bet Sony loved that one!). ‘1985’, ‘I Live To Fall Asleep’, ‘To Repel Ghosts’ etc. are ace. I thought the b-sides of that era were fantastic as well.

Out of the five recent albums, only Know Your Enemy really fails for me- Lifeblood is passable, This Is My Truth was the album got me hooked so I have a personal bias towards it. I thought SATT was a real return to their traditional sound, especially the guitars. I haven’t really developed any feelings towards Journal yet- I consider it more of a historical odity, like Lipstick Traces. I know it was recorded as a new album, but with archived material.

Is there any point in judging the sound of a forthcoming album on the basis of a lead single?

And hey, I stand by my original comment- I guess Danodin will have no objections anyhow, since you have a a atated preference for Holy Bible/ Journal rather than ‘commercial’ Manics.

I love The Holy Bible, but I also love the ‘commercial’ Manics. THB and Everything Must Go are two of my favourite albums… but they are so different they could be two different bands. Tigers put me in mind of Everything Must Go, which is a good thing in my view. I hope the new album is more from that ilk than the lead single suggests (but then I wasn’t fussed on the lead single from Tigers either, Your Love Is Not Enough took a long time to grow on me)

> This Is My Truth was the album got me hooked so I have a personal bias towards it

I don’t hate it (in fact Ready For Drowning and Nobody Loved You are two of my top MSP tracks ever, and most of the singles were good), it just felt a little overblown and self-righteous in places.

My opinion of singles like Tsunami has changed so much over the years. I used to hate it, maybe because my mum liked it and the other singles from that album. Surely your mum’s not supposed to be into a band who sing about anorexia, prostitution and Trotsky… Now I’d listen to Tsunami over most of the rest of the tracks on This Is My Truth…, though I’m Not Working and My Little Empire are my favourites.

I’d agree with your assessment of Tsunami- to me its grown on repeated listening of the album, and probably because I listened to IYTT and You Stole… so much at the time they were released (I don’t tend to listen to HB, Everything… or TISMT as much these days for the same reasons). If you had to leave me with one Manics album though it would be Generation Terrorists- it’s an excellent ‘baseline’ of what i consider the Manic’s sound to be.