Manic Street Preachers — Lifeblood

It would seem now, that the back-to-basics route the Manics took for 2001’s harsh, underwhelming Know Your Enemy, was a wrong turn, not a brave new direction. Despite rumours of their impending retirement, the original Generation Terrorists have opted to stump the eulogists with the kind of beatific, wide-open rock they cast off years ago. Often backed by gushy choral "oohs" and "aahs," James Dean Bradfield’s words are swirling swells of passion, despair and strangely mixed metaphors and an overall sense of emotional abandonment. Opener "1985" sets the tone for much of what follows. When Bradfield sighs "So God is dead like Nietzsche said/Superstition is all we have left," he manages to make even a hardboiled philosophy lecture sound charged with romantic defeat.

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