Latest news with #Manics
Telegraph
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Manic Street Preachers, Shepherd's Bush Empire: rock's great survivors remain refreshingly urgent
By their own early plans, Manic Street Preachers shouldn't exist in 2025. In the flush of youth, frontman James Dean Bradfield once asserted that the band's 1992 debut album, Generation Terrorists, would be their sole offering to the world. 'We'll release one double album that goes to Number One worldwide,' he declared at the time. 'One album, then we split. If it doesn't work, we split anyway. Either way, after one album, we're finished.' Thirty-three years later – and 30 since the disappearance of iconic guitarist Richey Edwards– the Manics are still here. Not only that, they've endured without becoming many of the things they might once have hated. Bassist Nicky Wire's leopard-print gilet may be the only sartorial nod to the glam look of old tonight, but on their recent Critical Thinking album – their 15th – their signature smart rock, sardonic lyricism and occasional bursts of nihilism sound refreshingly urgent. At Shepherd's Bush Empire on Saturday night, a stone's throw from the street they lived on when they first got going ('This is a spiritual place for us. The Bushranger used to do the best tuna melts I've ever tasted,' announced Wire) the Welsh legends were just as much about the nostalgia that comes naturally with age as they were asserting their continued relevance. Opening with new song Decline And Fall, with Bradfield belting out its thundering chorus, it was a reminder that, on a musical front, this has never been much of a problem for the Manics. They are a band blessed with an ability to imbue their music with a romance and ruggedness of real life in a way that vanishingly few others can. The constant quotes and literature references on the giant screen behind them also reminded, however showily, that, Pulp and Radiohead aside, they offered something more intellectually stimulating than their '90s peers, unafraid of challenging their audience to dig deeper. They've still got a lyrical spike as well. Taking the mic for the first-ever airing of Critical Thinking, Wire may have, endearingly, been reading from hastily-scrawled notes on what appears to be a large envelope ('I'd like to freestyle it, but I can't remember the f---king words'), but the bite of the song's shopping list of online self-help slogans ('It's okay to not be okay/Live your best life/Be kind/Have some empathy') were perfectly instructive of how the Manics digest and prod at the world in 2025. If it's a look-back you seek, there was the enormous single Australia, a particularly stirring A Design For Life, and evergreen mega-ballad Motorcycle Emptiness. For a demo of how well all this works pared back, Bradfield took to the stage alone mid-set, for a beautiful acoustic interlude of Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky and This Sullen Welsh Heart, featuring Catherine Anne Davies, AKA opener The Anchoress. And a closing pairing of classics Motown Junk and If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next arrived to predictably rowdy response. Should The Manics have lasted this long? A younger version would have said absolutely not. Sometimes, though, it's oh so right to be wrong.
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
On Critical Thinking, the Manic Street Preachers are back on their soapbox
'I don't know what I'm for / But I know what I'm against,' announces Nicky Wire on One Man Militia, a fierce post-punk crash and burn rant that concludes the Manic Street Preachers excellent 15th album, Critical Thinking. Conjuring impotent rage at the information overload era, it forms a ranting bookend with a similarly fierce title track that features Wire fuming about the blandness of self-help sloganeering in times of global peril. Or at least I think that is what he's getting at when he rattles off obtuse lines about hurtling 'down the avalanche / To the cul-de-sac of a non-descript nowhere land / Where JG Ballad once took a stand.' Bassist and lyricist Wire is 56 but still communicates with the convoluted ardour of a teenage politics and philosophy student who expects listeners to familiarise themselves with the footnotes. I don't always claim to understand what the Manic Street Preachers are getting so agitated about, but it is such a pleasure in this anodyne pop age to hear a band not just with the courage but the imperative to express complicated ideas and opinions. Particularly when they do so with such a compelling mix of musicality, melody and virtuosity, much of it located in the dazzling playing and singing of guitarist and multi-instrumentalist James Dean Bradfield and powerhouse drummer Sean Moore. Wire sings three of these songs, but Bradfield takes the lead on the rest. He possesses such a gloriously tuneful voice he apparently has little trouble bringing emotion to a song that opens with the uninviting couplet, 'Within multiple narrative graphs / I'm told I'm a symbol of the past' (Deleted Scenes). The rippling guitar and piano lines that weave glittery hooks throughout Critical Thinking are an absolute wonder. The Manics may be a passionately driven, politically fierce agit pop rock band but crucially they rarely lose sight of the pop element in that equation. Choruses ring out, hooks flash and entice. The anger that burns in Wire's often quite nihilistic lyrics is offset by the sheer joy and melodious flow of a trio who have been playing together since the 1980s. The lovely Dear Stephen is addressed to disgraced indie idol Morrissey, the Manics' affection for the Smith's outsider oeuvre enforced as much by waves of twisty, jangly guitar as it is by a lyrical appeal to their misanthropic hero to embrace 'repentance and forgiveness'. The Manics' pre and post date Britpop, so whilst this typically fine album might receive a boost in a year of Oasis reunions and 90s nostalgia, it more than stands on its own merits. They are a very singular group, apparently as utterly committed to each other and their various causes as they ever were in their firebrand youths. Fortunately for listeners, their greatest cause seems to be making pithy, imaginative, catchy, arty alternative rock bangers. Even if they are merely preaching to the converted, I am delighted that they are still on their soapbox, giving it loads. Neil McCormick Automatic, the fifth album from US folk pop duo The Lumineers, is anything but automatic. It is the work of two men utterly engaged with their art and craft, shifting through many gears, from soft and sweet to edgy and tough, from introspective and reflective to amused and sometimes bemused. These are carefully and precisely handmade songs of astute observation, emotional truth, sprinkled with hard-worn wisdom, everyday bafflement and lots of little jokes. The Lumineers are a duo from Denver, Colorado, comprising vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Wesley Schultz and drummer, pianist and co-songwriter Jeremiah Fraites. They have been writing and playing together since 2005 but only broke through (with former member cellist Neyla Pekarek) in 2011 with rumbustious single Ho Hey. In that first wave of fame, they were often compared to an American version of Mumford & Sons, partly because of an air of direct acoustic vigour allied to a folky, singalong spirit. They remain a hugely popular arena touring act with an expanded lineup who perform with crowd-pleasing swagger, but subsequent albums have revealed them to be much more intimate and introspective with a tendency toward quite spartan arrangements that focus intensely on the duo's songwriting skills. Some of the songs on Automatic reflect the duo's journey and dependence on each other. Same Old Song conjures the anxieties and rewards of a struggling band, redeemed by the power of music and the belief that 'any of us could make it big or could end up dead on the pavement'. 'Twenty years and no one gives a damn,' Schultz sings on You're All I Got, fighting ennui from the other side of success, a world of 'lawyers fees, stretch limousines' that is only sustained by the love of music. The 'you're all I've got' refrain returns on Keys on the Table, facing another crisis of faith in a long relationship, with a subtextual struggle to retain unity and integrity in a cruel world: 'I feel ashamed to breathe / I can't believe we lost to the machine.' America in the news has become a scary place, with its despot president, starkly divided politics and violent edginess of a country at war with its own ideas of itself. It is a setting that forms an anxious backdrop to these songs of love and interdependence. The title track conveys an air of disconnection – 'Shooting stars / Eating at the salad bars / Driving your electric cars / Praying for the rain' – a whole nation running on automatic. The spookily sensuous Ativan is named after an anti-anxiety medication and holds out the empty promise of numbing yourself against the daily drama of a perilous new reality 'on the bullet train to Neverland / Your enemy with benefits'. Nevertheless, there is an underlying tenderness to the Lumineers' oeuvre that makes every song sound like an act of soulful resistance. It is a sense of heartful community and care perhaps implicit in the folky, singer-songwriter form, digging into roots of Americana. In the stark, melodious simplicity of the Lumineers' songcraft every detail resonates. These are uncluttered but very refined arrangements, with Fraites's rhythm parts and piano work pinging precise hooks into the spaces between Shultz's sweetly fragile vocals. Automatic is a lovely thing, made with understated soul and humour. Asshole is (despite its title) a very tender and thoughtful love song, built around the observation 'The first we ever met / You thought I was an asshole.' The singer agrees this notion was 'Probably correct' but there is an empathy and wisdom at work here that gives the lie to such self-deprecating wit. Automatic is a very human sounding record, a manual transmission in a digital world. NMC You may well be flummoxed by the deluge of archive releases from Neil Young these past few years: another month seems to bring yet another unreleased album from the 1970s. So, how many LPs did he actually make in his heyday? Did the total run into three figures? The truth is, there have only been three or four complete salvage jobs with a substantial amount of unreleased songs aboard. 1976's mostly acoustic Hitchhiker had been deemed more like a collection of demos by his record company at the time, while 1975's Homegrown and 2001's Toast were most likely shelved by Young himself after having second thoughts about revealing so much about the crumbling of his relationships in them. Latterly, he hasn't been unearthing lost compositions, so much as regrouping previously released ones, both well-known and relatively obscure, in running orders which he maintains were considered back in the day, often using early or alternate versions for aesthetic unity – as on this album. Oceanside Countryside captures the maverick Canadian songsmith in relaxed mood, as if strumming by a campfire on California's Pacific coastline, mining his influences from arcane folk music (Captain Kennedy) to jaunty country & western (Field Of Opportunity, which even has a fiddle solo). Those deep-pocketed obsessives who've managed to keep pace with Young's reissues may be disappointed to hear that most of the raw versions of these songs have appeared before. But for more regular fans, the music on this album is wonderful. It's supremely chilled yet deeply soulful, a dream soundtrack for early-summer evenings – should we ever scrape clear of this bitter winter. Andrew Perry It can often feel like the joyful, sample-crazy energy of pre-millennial rap has long since drained out of hip hop. In that context in the early 2010s, British duo Rizzle Kicks were a breath of fresh air, bringing back the irrepressibly bouncey vibe of rap-influenced early-90s pop acts, before the fame-ravaged angst set in. They topped the charts as guests on Olly Murs's Heart Skips A Beat (2011), and almost matched that achievement with their Top Five album the same year – Stereo Typical – which included hits Down With The Trumpets and Mama Do The Hump. Jordan Stephens and Harley Alexander-Sule, both BRIT School alumni, looked hard-wired for long-term success. However, their second outing, 2013's Roaring 20s, never quite caught fire, and the pair went their separate ways, the garrulous, driven Stephens branching out into TV as both an actor and a presenter, while Alexander-Sule comparatively retreated to co-write with other artists, and release music incognito as Jimi Charles Moody. As this first album in twelve years frequently reveals, both have been through the mill in the interim, Stephens coping with ADHD and a drug habit, while Alexander-Sule battled anxiety and depression. 'A day without an existential spiral is a rare one,' notes Stephen on Pleasure & Pain, a track directly chronicling his lifestyle changes. Very much the product of young men maturing in their thirties, Competition Is For Losers unfolds at less racy tempos than before, befitting of its more reflective themes, but it's no less enjoyable. Teaser single Javelin has all the care-free falsetto groove of an outtake from Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, while New Energy recalls the beatbox soul of Marvin Gaye, circa Sexual Healing. Ultimately, you emerge feeling that Rizzle Kicks have faced challenges and this sage and mostly triumphant comeback record, replete with self-help mantras and positive reinforcement, is the very sound of their overcoming them. AP by Poppie Platt Addison Rae, High FashionHaving swapped a lucrative TikTok career – consisting mostly of contrived dance routines and sponsored Outfit of the Day videos – for the big leagues of pop music and film (including a $2 million deal with Netflix), Addison Rae's new single is a deliciously subversive slice of all-American pop from the wannabe lovechild of Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey. AJ Tracey (featuring Jorja Smith), CRUSH The West London grime rapper serves up another addictively nostalgic, Noughties garage-influenced banger, anchored by a guest turn from Walsall-raised R&B singer Jorja Smith, her versatility on full display as she pivots between rapid rap and soulful reflection as she sings of a relationship in its dying days ('I listened when you told me / I cannot be sorry, boy, I've tried'). Girl Tones, I Know You KnowGrunge lovers will lap up the latest single from this rising Kentucky duo – made up of siblings Kenzie and Laila Crowe – which showcases their knack for fusing stripped-back, almost ethereal vocals with fiery riffs. Sabrina Carpenter (featuring Dolly Parton), Please Please PleaseFresh from a triumphant Grammys (two wins for her album Short n' Sweet, and the best pure-pop performance of the night), Carpenter teams up with the country legend for a barn-stomping remix of her hit 2024 single, proving, once again, that she's the hottest commodity in pop right now. The video is great fun, too. Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard, Back in the GameA brilliant surprise for Radiohead (or The Smile) fans – Thom Yorke teams up with electronic musician/composer Mark Pritchard for a pulsating, mind-bending psychedelic odyssey; Yorke's digitally distorted vocals adding a further layer to his famously emotional, anguished tones.
Telegraph
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
On Critical Thinking, the Manic Street Preachers are back on their soapbox
'I don't know what I'm for / But I know what I'm against,' announces Nicky Wire on One Man Militia, a fierce post-punk crash and burn rant that concludes the Manic Street Preachers excellent 15th album, Critical Thinking. Conjuring impotent rage at the information overload era, it forms a ranting bookend with a similarly fierce title track that features Wire fuming about the blandness of self-help sloganeering in times of global peril. Or at least I think that is what he's getting at when he rattles off obtuse lines about hurtling 'down the avalanche / To the cul-de-sac of a non-descript nowhere land / Where JG Ballad once took a stand.' Bassist and lyricist Wire is 56 but still communicates with the convoluted ardour of a teenage politics and philosophy student who expects listeners to familiarise themselves with the footnotes. I don't always claim to understand what the Manic Street Preachers are getting so agitated about, but it is such a pleasure in this anodyne pop age to hear a band not just with the courage but the imperative to express complicated ideas and opinions. Particularly when they do so with such a compelling mix of musicality, melody and virtuosity, much of it located in the dazzling playing and singing of guitarist and multi-instrumentalist James Dean Bradfield and powerhouse drummer Sean Moore. Wire sings three of these songs, but Bradfield takes the lead on the rest. He possesses such a gloriously tuneful voice he apparently has little trouble bringing emotion to a song that opens with the uninviting couplet, 'Within multiple narrative graphs / I'm told I'm a symbol of the past' (Deleted Scenes). The rippling guitar and piano lines that weave glittery hooks throughout Critical Thinking are an absolute wonder. The Manics may be a passionately driven, politically fierce agit pop rock band but crucially they rarely lose sight of the pop element in that equation. Choruses ring out, hooks flash and entice. The anger that burns in Wire's often quite nihilistic lyrics is offset by the sheer joy and melodious flow of a trio who have been playing together since the 1980s. The lovely Dear Stephen is addressed to disgraced indie idol Morrissey, the Manics' affection for the Smith's outsider oeuvre enforced as much by waves of twisty, jangly guitar as it is by a lyrical appeal to their misanthropic hero to embrace 'repentance and forgiveness'. The Manics' pre and post date Britpop, so whilst this typically fine album might receive a boost in a year of Oasis reunions and 90s nostalgia, it more than stands on its own merits. They are a very singular group, apparently as utterly committed to each other and their various causes as they ever were in their firebrand youths. Fortunately for listeners, their greatest cause seems to be making pithy, imaginative, catchy, arty alternative rock bangers. Even if they are merely preaching to the converted, I am delighted that they are still on their soapbox, giving it loads. Neil McCormick The Lumineers, Automatic ★★★★☆ Automatic, the fifth album from US folk pop duo The Lumineers, is anything but automatic. It is the work of two men utterly engaged with their art and craft, shifting through many gears, from soft and sweet to edgy and tough, from introspective and reflective to amused and sometimes bemused. These are carefully and precisely handmade songs of astute observation, emotional truth, sprinkled with hard-worn wisdom, everyday bafflement and lots of little jokes. The Lumineers are a duo from Denver, Colorado, comprising vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Wesley Schultz and drummer, pianist and co-songwriter Jeremiah Fraites. They have been writing and playing together since 2005 but only broke through (with former member cellist Neyla Pekarek) in 2011 with rumbustious single Ho Hey. In that first wave of fame, they were often compared to an American version of Mumford & Sons, partly because of an air of direct acoustic vigour allied to a folky, singalong spirit. They remain a hugely popular arena touring act with an expanded lineup who perform with crowd-pleasing swagger, but subsequent albums have revealed them to be much more intimate and introspective with a tendency toward quite spartan arrangements that focus intensely on the duo's songwriting skills. Some of the songs on Automatic reflect the duo's journey and dependence on each other. Same Old Song conjures the anxieties and rewards of a struggling band, redeemed by the power of music and the belief that 'any of us could make it big or could end up dead on the pavement'. 'Twenty years and no one gives a damn,' Schultz sings on You're All I Got, fighting ennui from the other side of success, a world of 'lawyers fees, stretch limousines' that is only sustained by the love of music. The 'you're all I've got' refrain returns on Keys on the Table, facing another crisis of faith in a long relationship, with a subtextual struggle to retain unity and integrity in a cruel world: 'I feel ashamed to breathe / I can't believe we lost to the machine.' America in the news has become a scary place, with its despot president, starkly divided politics and violent edginess of a country at war with its own ideas of itself. It is a setting that forms an anxious backdrop to these songs of love and interdependence. The title track conveys an air of disconnection – 'Shooting stars / Eating at the salad bars / Driving your electric cars / Praying for the rain' – a whole nation running on automatic. The spookily sensuous Ativan is named after an anti-anxiety medication and holds out the empty promise of numbing yourself against the daily drama of a perilous new reality 'on the bullet train to Neverland / Your enemy with benefits'. Nevertheless, there is an underlying tenderness to the Lumineers' oeuvre that makes every song sound like an act of soulful resistance. It is a sense of heartful community and care perhaps implicit in the folky, singer-songwriter form, digging into roots of Americana. In the stark, melodious simplicity of the Lumineers' songcraft every detail resonates. These are uncluttered but very refined arrangements, with Fraites's rhythm parts and piano work pinging precise hooks into the spaces between Shultz's sweetly fragile vocals. Automatic is a lovely thing, made with understated soul and humour. Asshole is (despite its title) a very tender and thoughtful love song, built around the observation 'The first we ever met / You thought I was an asshole.' The singer agrees this notion was 'Probably correct' but there is an empathy and wisdom at work here that gives the lie to such self-deprecating wit. Automatic is a very human sounding record, a manual transmission in a digital world. NMC Neil Young, Oceanside Countryside ★★★★☆ You may well be flummoxed by the deluge of archive releases from Neil Young these past few years: another month seems to bring yet another unreleased album from the 1970s. So, how many LPs did he actually make in his heyday? Did the total run into three figures? The truth is, there have only been three or four complete salvage jobs with a substantial amount of unreleased songs aboard. 1976's mostly acoustic Hitchhiker had been deemed more like a collection of demos by his record company at the time, while 1975's Homegrown and 2001's Toast were most likely shelved by Young himself after having second thoughts about revealing so much about the crumbling of his relationships in them. Latterly, he hasn't been unearthing lost compositions, so much as regrouping previously released ones, both well-known and relatively obscure, in running orders which he maintains were considered back in the day, often using early or alternate versions for aesthetic unity – as on this album. Oceanside Countryside captures the maverick Canadian songsmith in relaxed mood, as if strumming by a campfire on California's Pacific coastline, mining his influences from arcane folk music (Captain Kennedy) to jaunty country & western (Field Of Opportunity, which even has a fiddle solo). Those deep-pocketed obsessives who've managed to keep pace with Young's reissues may be disappointed to hear that most of the raw versions of these songs have appeared before. But for more regular fans, the music on this album is wonderful. It's supremely chilled yet deeply soulful, a dream soundtrack for early-summer evenings – should we ever scrape clear of this bitter winter. Andrew Perry Rizzle Kicks, Competition Is For Losers ★★★★☆ It can often feel like the joyful, sample-crazy energy of pre-millennial rap has long since drained out of hip hop. In that context in the early 2010s, British duo Rizzle Kicks were a breath of fresh air, bringing back the irrepressibly bouncey vibe of rap-influenced early-90s pop acts, before the fame-ravaged angst set in. They topped the charts as guests on Olly Murs's Heart Skips A Beat (2011), and almost matched that achievement with their Top Five album the same year – Stereo Typical – which included hits Down With The Trumpets and Mama Do The Hump. Jordan Stephens and Harley Alexander-Sule, both BRIT School alumni, looked hard-wired for long-term success. However, their second outing, 2013's Roaring 20s, never quite caught fire, and the pair went their separate ways, the garrulous, driven Stephens branching out into TV as both an actor and a presenter, while Alexander-Sule comparatively retreated to co-write with other artists, and release music incognito as Jimi Charles Moody. As this first album in twelve years frequently reveals, both have been through the mill in the interim, Stephens coping with ADHD and a drug habit, while Alexander-Sule battled anxiety and depression. 'A day without an existential spiral is a rare one,' notes Stephen on Pleasure & Pain, a track directly chronicling his lifestyle changes. Very much the product of young men maturing in their thirties, Competition Is For Losers unfolds at less racy tempos than before, befitting of its more reflective themes, but it's no less enjoyable. Teaser single Javelin has all the care-free falsetto groove of an outtake from Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, while New Energy recalls the beatbox soul of Marvin Gaye, circa Sexual Healing. Ultimately, you emerge feeling that Rizzle Kicks have faced challenges and this sage and mostly triumphant comeback record, replete with self-help mantras and positive reinforcement, is the very sound of their overcoming them. AP Best New Songs by Poppie Platt Addison Rae, High Fashion Having swapped a lucrative TikTok career – consisting mostly of contrived dance routines and sponsored Outfit of the Day videos – for the big leagues of pop music and film (including a $2 million deal with Netflix), Addison Rae's new single is a deliciously subversive slice of all-American pop from the wannabe lovechild of Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey. AJ Tracey (featuring Jorja Smith), CRUSH The West London grime rapper serves up another addictively nostalgic, Noughties garage-influenced banger, anchored by a guest turn from Walsall-raised R&B singer Jorja Smith, her versatility on full display as she pivots between rapid rap and soulful reflection as she sings of a relationship in its dying days ('I listened when you told me / I cannot be sorry, boy, I've tried'). Girl Tones, I Know You Know Grunge lovers will lap up the latest single from this rising Kentucky duo – made up of siblings Kenzie and Laila Crowe – which showcases their knack for fusing stripped-back, almost ethereal vocals with fiery riffs. Sabrina Carpenter (featuring Dolly Parton), Please Please Please Fresh from a triumphant Grammys (two wins for her album Short n' Sweet, and the best pure-pop performance of the night), Carpenter teams up with the country legend for a barn-stomping remix of her hit 2024 single, proving, once again, that she's the hottest commodity in pop right now. The video is great fun, too. Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard, Back in the Game A brilliant surprise for Radiohead (or The Smile) fans – Thom Yorke teams up with electronic musician/composer Mark Pritchard for a pulsating, mind-bending psychedelic odyssey; Yorke's digitally distorted vocals adding a further layer to his famously emotional, anguished tones.
The Guardian
10-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Why we all need sisu – the Finnish concept of action and creativity in hard times
In 2023, I was in the top 0.05% of Spotify listeners of Manic Street Preachers. It was one song on repeat. I would bet good money that there is no one in the world who has listened to their cover of Burt Bacharach's and Hal David's Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head as much as me. No one except my daughter, who was also there as it played through the night, and through every nap, too, for the first 15 months of her life. Some babies need white noise to soothe them to sleep; mine needed my arms and James Dean Bradfield's voice. Astonishingly, despite this, I do not now hate the song – in fact, I quite like hearing it. If this column ever makes its way to you, James: thank you. My child chose this song as some pick a favourite teddy. She was crying, being comforted by my husband, who was playing one of his (many, many) Manics albums, when the track changed; on came Raindrops. Within a few notes, she had stopped crying and started listening. My husband called me over and we stood in silence, amazed and a little giddy. As struggling new parents with a tiny baby who cried a lot, we were so relieved to find this gift that seemed to bring her a profound sense of consolation, that helped to bring her back to herself and to us. We sang it a lot. I changed some of the words – our daughter's feet were too small for her bed, rather than too big – and I think the lyrics give crying a bad name. But, with some minor amends, this song became the soundtrack to her infancy and our early parenthood. After listening to it so many times, I came to hear within it some valuable indications for the building of a better life. It's a simple melody, which could easily be saccharine in the wrong hands, but the Manics' cover has something special about it. I think it's because this recording embodies the subject of the song. The lyrics tell of a person who keeps getting caught in the rain, who refuses to let that defeat him and who finds freedom in the knowledge that happiness will return. But this song is not simply about that; it is that – the very sound of that freedom. Raindrops was one of the first songs the Manics recorded after the disappearance of their dear friend and bandmate Richey Edwards, 30 years ago this month. I read that, in the aftermath of this traumatic loss, for a time, the band felt that they could not continue. But with the blessing of Edwards' family, and to the anger of some of their fans, they decided to keep making music. This song was a radical act of survival. Bradfield's singing is the sound of growth through pain. I hear in it a refusal to lose oneself in the dark; music as an active choice of creativity and life amid devastation and grief. When you listen to it, even without knowing this backstory, it touches you – even my infant daughter felt something. What I learned from my psychotherapy training, and again in early motherhood, is that every developmental leap is a grasping for freedom out of the pain of loss. The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion understood that our very capacity to think in infancy grows out of our need to make sense of the loss of our mother's breast or our bottle at the end of every feed, and to bear that sense of separateness and aloneness. When we are drinking milk, there is no need to think. We can just enjoy feeling sated and merged; we have everything we need. But when we are hungry, we are driven to think of the breast or bottle that is no longer there. It is this difficult experience of longing for something we no longer have, this coming to tolerate the pain of separation, that necessitates the use of thought, propelling our minds into development. I was recently lying in bed awake in the early hours, listening to Radio 4. The programme Something to Declare came on, about the Finnish concept of sisu, which the behavioural scientist Emilia Elisabet Lahti expresses as 'life force in times of adversity'. I understood this to be a more profound concept than resilience, which is often spoken of as a muscle we can train (snore). Sisu is the part of us that comes alive when we feel as if we have nothing left, when we think we cannot go on, but we do. It struck me that this part of ourselves may well not exist prior to being necessitated into existence – like a thought, it is a capacity that grows in the moment of being needed. I think that's what happened to me when my daughter was born: out of the traumatic birth and the traumatic sleep deprivation and the traumatic everything else grew new capacities for survival and growth and love that I did not previously possess. A better life won't always be a happier life. It will necessarily involve periods of extreme unhappiness and difficulty. That's the cost of doing business; sometimes it rains. A better life is not sitting there waiting for you to find it in an exercise routine or a therapist or a self-help book; it comes from living and loving and losing in freedom and in hope. If we can do that, there's no knowing when life's most meaningful moments might grace us. We might hear it in a few words of a radio programme in the lonely darkness of a sleepless night, or in a simple melody with the surprising power to console a crying baby, like light refracting through raindrops. Moya Sarner is an NHS psychotherapist and the author of When I Grow Up – Conversations With Adults in Search of Adulthood Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Manic Street Preachers: Critical Thinking review
Having rather lost their way for a decade, the Manics rediscovered their fire on Send Away the Tigers (2007) and then 2009's magnificent Journal for Plague Lovers, and the albums since – while never quite reaching those heights – have been consistently impressive, offering minor variations rather than full-scale revolution. In that respect, Critical Thinking, their 15th album, doesn't represent any great departure, even if the abrasive opening title track is something of a curveball, Nicky Wire coming across as a Ballardian Baz Luhrmann as he skewers the ideas of mindfulness and wellness over a Gang of Four-influenced backdrop. From then on, we're on more familiar territory, Decline and Fall and Brushstrokes of Reunion deploying the same galloping Abba piano flourishes that lit up 2021's Ultra Vivid Lament. Dear Stephen jangles in a very 1980s way and is a bittersweet yearning for that era's incarnation of (Steven) Morrissey ('I'm still a prisoner to you and Larkin/ Even as your history darkens'), as opposed to his more troubling recent persona. In the 90s, you'd have bet good money against the band growing older this gracefully, yet here we are with another reflective and thought-provoking set.
