Tuesday 22 May 2007

Manic Street Preachers - Wolverhampton Civic Hall - May 21st 2007


Every time the Manics return, it’s on the promise that the new album has bought out the best in them, and that the last album was merely just a slip-up.
This time round, all those cliché’s are present and correct, but they’ve gone one step further by re-introducing the typeface from 'The holy bible' period of the band, the pinnacle of their career. They have also re-adopted the military garb, and produced and album of ‘Generation Terrorist’ style rockers.
New album ‘Send Away The Tigers’ premiered with the digital release of ‘Underdogs’, and I’m thinking that maybe they’re telling the truth this time. Then I hear the album and alas, I realized I was duped. Again.

With every Manics album since 'Everything Must Go', I’ve took out tracks and replaced them with brilliant b-sides and come up with a great alternate version of the album, whilst moaning that they’ve “lost it”. I now have a different viewpoint, which is the Manics indeed have lost it when it comes to producing great albums. They can however create some fantastic tracks, and I’ve come to the realization that for me, this will do nicely.

When seeing the Manics live though (which I’ve done many a time), I’ve found myself walking out of many a Manic gig (admittedly the last time wasn’t the bands fault, because unbeknownst to us at the time, Lisa was pregnant), and the reports come in that the latest tour is the Manic’s ‘back to their best’. Again.

So were they?

Sorry, nope. The Manics at Wolverhampton were not the Manics at their best, but don’t be alarmed. The Manics at Wolverhampton were very nearly at their best, they were certainly the best I’ve seen them in ten years. This isn’t down to the addition of tracks from 'Generation Terrorists', as there was a genuine fire in the belly of the band tonight, even if James Dean Bradfields vocals were a bit off the mark at times. Old tracks mixed well with new tracks, and thankfully, tracks from ‘Know Your Enemy’ and This Is My Truth’ were sparse. ‘Lifeblood’, which the band now claim to dislike intensely, was left out altogether which was a shame as I feel it’s one of their better albums.

But who am I to judge!

Tracklisting: RED tracks were great, BLACK tracks were good, BLUE tracks were awful.

You Love Us
Imperial Bodybags
Motorcycle Emptiness (never understood what was so good about this track)
Winterlovers (Bon Joviesque crap)
Faster
La Tristesse Durera
Send Away The Tigers (really opressive backing vocals)
Everything Must Go
From Despair To Where
Rendition
Born To End
Ocean Spray
Your Love Alone Is Not Enough
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (Like the album it's culled from, dire)
This Is Yesterday (Solo/Electric)
No Surface All Feeling (Acoustic)
Sleepflower
Autumnsong
You Stole The Sun From My Heart (Way too much keyboard action)
Little Baby Nothing
Condemned To Rock and Roll/Motown Junk
A Design For Life

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