The first album without guitarist/lyricist Richey Edwards,
who disappeared mysteriously in February the year before.
Nicky Wire (bassist, lyricist) in an interview with The Guardian in 2016: “We always
wanted to be massive. It would have been great for Richey to have been with us at those
huge gigs. That’s the real sadness. It’s great that he is on the record with some of his lyrics thoug.
Manics on the cover of NME in 1994
James Dean Brandfield (Vocalist, guitarist) in the same interview: “Look, let’s get in
a room together as a band rather than as friends, and see what the dynamic is like without Richey. Writing a song like A Design for Life was a massive relief: it was the only way we could
be ourselves again.”
The record peaked at #2 in the UK.
NME said: “You leave feeling privileged to have experienced such a life-affirming
and tuneful bout of self-counselling, and you feel it’s done them good as well.
‘Everything Must Go’ punches at its own heavy, emotional weight – of recent memory only Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’ can spar in the same ring – but as the right hand pounds you with desolation, the left follows through with a tentative and gentle tickle of optimism.”
TUTV: My all-Manics-time favorite album. A grand mixed emotions opus. The first LP without the sadly missed Richey Edwards. Everything Must Go felt and still feels like a heart and soul tribute to him.”
Welsh luminaries MANIC STREET PREACHERS (1986 – present / 15 studio albums, so far) released their immortal classic single A DESIGN OF LIFE on 15 April 1996, today 30 years ago.
The opening line of the song, ‘Libraries gave us power’, was inspired by the famous aphorism Knowledge Is Power engraved in stone above the top floor central window
of the library in Pillgwenlly, Newport, 15 miles from the band’s hometown of Blackwood.
The words are attributed to Sir Francis Bacon,English
philosopher and statesman from the 16th century.
The next line, ‘then work came and made us free‘, refers to the German slogan Arbeit Macht Frei that featured above the gates of Nazi concentration camps and which had been used previously by the band in their song “The Intense Humming of Evil” on the album The Holy Bible.
The song featured on their 4th longplayer, Everything Must Go, the first
without Richey Edwards, who disappeared in 1995 and was declared dead
in 2008.
It peaked at #2, in both the UK and Scotland.
“Libraries gave us power
Then work came and made us free
What price now
For a shallow piece of dignity
I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my dirty face
To wear the scars
To show from where I came
We don’t talk about love We only wanna get drunk And we are not allowed to spend As we are told that this is the end”
Welsh rock heroes MANIC STREET PREACHERS released their 15th LP,
baptized Critical Thinking, last February. A record stuffed with sticky,
melancholic tunes and sharp daily life observations.
The Manics are still engaged, socially and politically,
and criticize and address injustice, intolerance
and other related, humankind issues.
The original fast and furious resoluteness has slowly vanished after 39 years.
Quite logical when one gets older and more settled, but their caring mindset
still is intact and in the right place and they have filled a Wurlitzer jukebox with
splendacious gems by now.
But on stage they still sparkle, enrapture and stir hearts and souls like they
did in their 20s (I know, I saw them 20-plus times). Last Saturday they landed
at Rock Zottegem Festival in Belgium. It was a blast, an absolute blast. The sound
was impeccable, the setlist was unflawed, the band was in high spirits and the
crowd’s vivid euphoria went sky-high.
I can’t get tired of hearing imperishable classics such as Motorcycle Emptiness,
You Stole the Sun From My Heart, Australia, A Design for Life, You Love Us (dedicated
to the wonderful Richey Edwards who disappeared in 1995, aged 27) and If You Tolerate
This Your Children Will Be Next, all delivered (like the whole set) with an infectious ardency and tons of vim and vigour and the new album’s poppy singles, the Nicky Wire sung Hiding In Plain Sight and Decline & Fall fitted in seamlessly.
Frontman James Dean Bradfield voice filled the giant tent, Nicky Wire still looked and played his bass like a bona fide rock star, drummer Sean More hit his gear with the usual sinewy
panache, and their extra guitarist and keyboardist completed the line-up.
Manics are not done yet, far from it.
They’re designed for life. Never delayed.
Hail hail!
SETLIST
Motorcycle Emptiness
Enola/Alone
You Stole the Sun From My Heart
Decline & Fall
La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)
Australia
International Blue
Hiding in Plain Sight
Autumnsong
A Design for Life
The Everlasting
From Despair to Where
Walk Me to the Bridge
Your Love Alone Is Not Enough
You Love Us
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next
Artist: TDID Who: A musical project originating from the Strasbourg area in France. Its name
is inspired by Trouble Dissociatif de l’Identité (TDI in French) and Dissociative Identity
Disorder (DID in English), a condition where multiple personalities coexist within the same individual. A perfect metaphor for TDID’s musical vision: an ever-evolving artistic identity, embracing different sonic facets while remaining anchored in a dark and immersive aesthetic.
Press info: TDID takes us on a journey through ethereal soundscapes and haunting rhythms. Each track delves into themes of isolation, confronting darkness, and the search for truth. The album oscillates between melancholy and raw power, driven by cold synths, deep basslines, and a spectral voice that echoes like a call in the night.
TUTV: A fitting soundtrack for every Goth addict who wants to go out, hit a sinister nightclub and lose him/herself in the hypnotizing vortex of mysterious darkwave dynamics.
Echoes of early Siouxsie bone-chilling wailing and Lene Lovich‘s enigmatic melodiousness inject Xx Phlegmatic with ominous sonic shadows you love to be surrounded by. TDID creates a ghostly world where surreality and reality meet. Fascinating.
James Dean Bradfield (frontman): “As you get older and as all the concepts, ideologies
and understandings that you’ve grown up with start to dissemble and crumble around you – whether it be left, right or left of centre – once you realise that they become a separate tense and economies work in different ways – the game is up. You can’t think the way you used to think. You’ve got to have a looser way of thinking and see what comes out of it. That’s what
we did with this record.”
Photo credit: Alex Lake
NME says: “With warm but spiky ’80s art-indie, the Welsh rock veterans’
15th album finds no absolute design for life – but still plenty of fight.”
TUTV: The Manics are one of my all-time favorite bands, on record and on stage,
but for the last 3 albums (this one included) they sound at times too mellow, too sugary, too poppy. I understand why. In your 50s, you can’t have the same flame burning as it happened in your 20s and let it hear you the way they did with cutting punk flair and roasting rippers.
Mind you, they still know what an anthem should/could sound like and they come up with a handful (Critical Thinking / Decline & Fall / Brushstrokes of Reunion / Hiding in Plain Sight / One Man Militia) but the new ones do not strike and adrenalize the way their many classics did/do. No, this isn’t a bad record at all but also not one to archive as a great one.
MOJO Magazine: “The combination of Schultz’s desperately appealing voice and
Fraites’s lonesome but poppy piano still hits hard. They’re still doing things right.”
TUTV: These are ecstatsic days for folk rock-pop fans. The Luminineers ‘ new one is out ow. The Lathums‘ 3rd one, titeld Matter Does Not Define lands on 7th March and Mumford & Sons 5th, named Rushmere comes out on March 25th. The Luminineers take it easy.
Except for anthemic, upbeat openers So Long and Asshole they entice with a series of sepia-colored torch songs, passional musings and picturesque balladry. Gather around romantic hearts, lit some candles and enjoy the longing melodrama at play here.
Press info: “This set grooves with social anxiety, internal strife, compulsive behaviours
and the dilemmas and tribulations of Los Angeles life, where vocalist/guitarist/songwroter Matthew “Murph” Murphy and his family live. From behind the band’s deceptively cuddly façade, Murph has always written openly about his anxiety, depression and addictions
(he’s now “sober as hell”).
But with this collection there’s a sense of progress towards confronting, accepting and coping with his issues. Alongside familiar sounds they explore new genres from glistening tech rock to sci-fi pop, futuristic fuzz rock to bluesy rock’n’roll, with touches of disco and hip-hop-inflections.”
UNCUT says: ““What may be The Wombats’ most plain fun album to date.”
TUTV: Lots of primo tunes to play out loud while driving in your car with the windows down, your hair in the wind and the sun up high. Wait, it’s still winter. So windows up, heating on and hair down, but don’t change the volume and your thrilling state of pop paradise mind.
Artist: IMUSTBE LEONARDO Who: Berlin-based Italian singer-songwriter who, since 2016,
has composed, recorded, and played songs around Europe and America. He has, so far, 2 albums and 2 EPs on his résumé.
ML: “The story of “Berlin, Ohio”, begins one morning in February 2022. Ten years had passed since I moved to Berlin, and that day I looked out the living room window and thought about some of the people I had met here, and who had left the city and the rooms they used to call home. Berlin appeared to me as a sort of unstoppable vortex made up of figures who arrived with their aspirations or who left because their future was now somewhere else. Those who remained had only two states of mind available: that of those who are making their dreams come true and that of those who are giving up. I thought I should tell the stories of those empty rooms, and of the ones who had left them.
“Berlin, Ohio” is a 36-minute album. It contains imperfections, smudges, wrinkles, flaws, and it is a work made with all the honesty, dedication and seriousness that Howard, Peter and I have been capable of. I am proud of this record, I am happy that it exists thanks to me, and I am bold enough to say that this work belongs to the present, to the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century – because many of the stories and thoughts it is made of could not have existed before now.
TUTV: IMustBe Leonardo is at his best when he translates his mixed emotions, his busy mind and his stream of consciousness in stripped-to-the-bone ponderings wrapped in intimate, introspective songs. Except for a couple of one-man-garage-rock band explosions (my favorite knife / the place) he and his expressive guitar do the talking.
Give the record a couple of spins, let the music
grow on you and you’ll find sonic tranquillity.
