Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy (2004)

Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy

1. Found That Soul
2. Ocean Spray
3. Intravenous Agnostic
4. So Why So Sad
5. Let Robeson Sing
6. The Year Of Purification
7. Wattsville Blues
8. Miss Europa Disco Dancer
9. Dead Martyrs
10. His Last Painting
11. My Guernica
12. The Convalescent
13. Royal Correspondent
14. Epicentre
15. Baby Elian
16. Freedom Of Speech Won't Feed My Children
17. Hidden Track

The Manic Street Preachers are a Welsh band who like to dress up, act intellectual and shout political slogans. Unsurprisingly, they seem a little silly. Also unsurprisingly, they command a huge cult following. They're made up of three people right now. Nicky Wire, James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore. Nicky is the cross-dressing, vacumming, teetollar bassist who writes all the lyrics, James is the singer and lead guitarist and musical genius, Sean is the drummer. Adding to their mystique is the fact that one of their band members who used to cut himself with knives and take pictures of it (Richey James Edwards), disappeared in 1994. Poof! And he never came back.

The year is now 2008 and my Manic Street Preachers tickets just came in the mail yesterday. It seems like I've spent the better part of my youth spraypainting my clothes, buying tiaras, feather boas, leopard skin tights, obsessing over them and acting like a bit of douche but good fucking god was it fun. And now I am old and it's hard to be as excited as I was, today especially, since I'm in one of those Serge Gainsbourg moods where you're old and bitter and drunk and just want to fuck girls.

It actually might be part of the reason that I'm posting Know Your Enemy. A quick Google survey reveals that a huge portion of the people who actually post in forums (as opposed to trolling, like normal internet denizens) think that this is the album when everything started skating downhill for the Manics. It was then that I realized that in the back of my mind, I felt everything after The Holy Bible to be a bit of a footnote. And I was overcome with shame. Was I really one of those cutter Richey fanatics who was depressedlawl and pined for his return? How could I have been so... so... unfair to James, the person who actually wrote all the music and was, possibly, the only talented one in the whole band?

My friend D, however, was being very fair to James when he told me that Know Your Enemy was actually his favourite album. I jumped back in shock! But why? According to him, the guitar work on Know Your Enemy was amazing. I jumped back in shock! But... I never noticed! So caught up was I in the Manics not sounding like the Manics anymore!

So, recently, I've tried to rediscover the Manics, this album in particular. It's not a very good introduction but there really are some good tracks on there. My favourite being So Why So Sad, which is an odd ditty that sounds like James has the same crush on Brian Wilson that I do. Stuff like Let Robeson Sing and Found That Soul has also kind of aged better. I find myself enjoying it a lot more than before. Maybe it's because I'm older, maybe it's because it so poppy, maybe it's because... I don't care, it just sounds better. I haven't discovered the amazing guitar work yet but I'm sure it's in there since my aforementioned friend is also a really amazing guitarist. Let me know if you find it though.

God, my writing has become really lazy all of a sudden. Oh well, WORKING WILL DO THAT TO YOU. Now I will proceed to get drunk to Serge Gainsbourg.


Know Your Enemy (drop.io)