Rev Matt: Journal For Plague Lovers

Journal For Plague Lovers by Manic Street Preachers

2009-10-02 10:15:00
I approached Journal for Plague Lovers with much trepidation. Steve Albini at the helm certainly made me hopeful but exhuming the words of the 14 years missing Richey Edwards made me fear a rehash of the brilliant horrorshow that was The Holy Bible, the last album on which he was the driving force. My fears were quickly assuaged.

A decade of Nicky's sparse lyricism and sense of a line gave James enough of a break to be able to wrap his mouth around the unconcerned constructions that typify Richey. The text is lighter than THB, there is a sense of a weight lifted. Still angry, still biting, still self obsessed, still casting wildly about from the Grand Odalisque to professional wrestling to mental instutions to Noam Chomsky. But not the despondent self loathing and solipsistic disgust of THB. It has a lighter touch, a sense of humor even. A line like "We missed the sex revolution when we failed the physical" would never have made it onto THB. I frequently find myself tying lyrics to events that occured long after the songs were written, an indication of the timeless quality of some of them.

Aurally Journal has a lot of the spare angular guitar of THB but with less brutal precision. James has said in the past that there are lyrics on THB that are still hard to sing because of the emotions they conjure in regards to Richey. I think that will be less the case overall with Journal with the notable exception of William's Last Words which he simply couldn't even sing in the studio and had Nicky sing it instead. And Nicky really does a fine job with it. I'm not a fan of his voice in general. He's not a bad singer certainly, there's just a tonal quality I don't particularly like. But on this track I couldn't imagine anyone else singing it.

The album kicks off with the raucous Peeled Apples, with a riff so infectious I pulled my guitar out of mothballs to play along. This is followed by the anthemic Jackie Collins Existential Question Time. A Richeyesque title threatening mouthfuls of complex lines and crowbared meter that don't actually appear. It's actually a peppy driving song. It would be a great single if not for the frequent repetition of the word 'fuck'. Me and Stephen Hawking I still struggle with. I think the chorus is a bit too slow and the transition from verse to chorus is jarring. Perhaps intentionally so. This Joke Sport Severed slows things down for a beautiful self loathing lyric and a majestic orchestral bridge into the title track, a rage against his institutionalization and the awful psychological damage done to him at the hands of The Priory. This is followed by one of the more forthrightly harrowing tracks, also about The Priory and the people he encountered there, She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach.

Continuing his fascination with the fashion industry, Facing Page: Top Left muses on models and fashion shoots with a spare guitar and piano accompaniment. Marlon Brando is another favorite topic, primarily his early career and personal life in the very electronica tinged (in tone, not instrumentation) Marlon J.D.. Doors Closing Slowly is a dirgey introspection of a man lamenting every choice he's made.

A trio of aggressive tracks pick up the pace and sets the scene for a quiet closing. The staccatto arpeggiation of All Is Vanity would not be at all out of place on THB and it has the catchiest chorus of the whole album "It's not what's wrong / it's what's right / makes me feel like I'm talking a foreign language sometimes". and segues so smoothly into Pretension/Repulsion that it takes a moment to realize it's a different song.

Virginia State Epileptic Colony ruminates on the distractions and liberation from burdens of institutional communal living. Richey has of course been a presence on all of their albums even after his disappearance and I wonder if the soft hearted and mellow William's Last Words is an attempt to put that to rest. It is the self penned epitaph of a man who is relieved to be at the end of his time.

Rating: 5

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Journal For Plague Lovers by Manic Street Preachers

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