Manic Street Preachers: Album by Album

by Marc Burrows (Editor), Catherine A. Davies (Foreword), Rhian E. Jones (Contributor)

In a career that's spanned thirty-five years and generated fourteen albums, fifty-three singles (two of them UK number ones), four Brit Awards, two Ivor Novellas and inspired literally hundreds of university dissertations, quite a few PhD's and the odd specialist subject on Mastermind, Manic Street Preachers have become, in the words of their 2011 singles collection, national treasures. The Welsh trio (who, to many, will always be a quartet) have a uniquely intense impact on their fans; educating them as much as they entertain and inspire. This book collects fourteen brand new essays, one for each Manics album, from fourteen different writers from diverse backgrounds, tracing the band's impact on fans and culture and setting each of their works, from 1992's Generation Terrorists to 2018's Resistance Is Futile and beyond, into context. The essays are linked by a detailed month-by-month biography by music critic and Manics fan Marc Burrows (The Guardian, The Quietus, Drowned In Sound), who compiled and edited the book, tracing the band's development from glamourpuss upstart intellectuals to the elder statesmen of British indie rock, via an era-defining run of hits, an historic trip to Cuba and one vanished genius. Manic Street Preachers: Album by Album includes a complete discography and is sourced from in-depth archival research, making it one of the most comprehensive and detailed works devoted to the band yet compiled.

Genres: Music

288 pages, Hardcover

Published October 28, 2021

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a diehard Manics fan, an English Lit graduate and qualified librarian (a ‘professional Manics fan’ as described by Marc in the intro!) I am always keen to consume any and all Manics-related written content, so I jumped at the chance to review this new book. By now, the band have had so much biographical content written about them that it can be hard to not just be retreading old ground. However, I would say this book is an essential Manics purchase, and I would recommend it to other fans without hesitation.

Although Simon Price’s ‘Everything’ remains an important and in-depth read covering the band’s eventful early years, it does of course, end around the year 2000. 21 busy years have passed since then and Burrows brings it right up to date, covering the new album released just a couple of months ago. Structured as a kind of encyclopaedia, chronologically listing significant events, dates, and releases, this caters completely to my librarian brain - where huge amounts of information should be organised, catalogued and easily referenced. I can imagine it was quite difficult to wrestle a complex history the size of the Manics into this timeline. Some of my friends have often asked if I would ever write a Manics book due to the huge amount of knowledge I have hoarded about them, I think this has done the job for me! I know that by having details like this all written down in black and white, it will be so useful to refer back to, to either check my own memories or to pedantically correct another fan!

The structure is broken up by the different narrative voices for each album-themed essay, which I thought was a nice way of showing the importance of fans within the Manics ‘story’. Each essay had its own merits, and made me consider new things about albums that I am so familiar with - millions of words have been written about The Holy Bible, but it was also great to see lesser-appreciated albums such as Lifeblood and Futurology get the ‘long read’ treatment.

It is a complex book to tell a complex story has been pulled together well by Burrows, and it was clearly a labour of love, much like being a Manics fan in general. The fan essays are not full of universal praise - showing how all of us have had times where we look at the band and think ‘what were they thinking?!’, but we stick with them because we know no other band could be as frustrating and rewarding as the Manics. The feeling of fondness towards the band rolls off every page.

[Alex Sarll]

Ah, now this was a tricky one. I know the editor, who also writes a fair chunk of it, and I enjoyed his previous book (a biography of Terry Pratchett) enormously. But the topic...well, depending how you count, I like almost exactly half of it. I'm intensely (intensely) keen on the five Manic Street Preachers albums with Richey content, and I have an odd and largely extratextual* fondness for the scrappy Know Your Enemy, even if I am of the appropriate demographic and dickishness to still mainly think of it as Know Youre Nemy. The rest of it? Mostly I've never heard them; usually I'd give the singles a chance, and that was more than enough. Still, I decided on balance to venture in on this, and I'm glad I did. The first of the essays proper is by Rhian E Jones, whose Clampdown I recently enjoyed, and as there it's clear we're in the hands of someone whose nineties was consistent with mine, as against the nightmare John Harris version which has since become hegemonic. No, this is the nineties where one pot of glitter gel was worth ten lumpen Beatles wannabes, as prefigured and partly summoned by the Manics' first album, "a perfectly preposterous record. A militantly sincere, kamikaze, this-is-it last stand of a first album." Flawed by any standards, not least the band's own impossible pre-release promises, she's nevertheless dead on when she says that "if The Holy Bible was, in Bradfield's words, 'a series of essays', then Generation Terrorists was an essay in itself, albeit an overlong and overly ambitious one handed in late with a hopeful grin." We're in similarly sure hands with the next few pieces – and it's interesting that (leaving aside the edge case of B-sides compilation Lipstick Traces) only the Richey-less albums get essays by male contributors. Which I'm sure can't have been intended to support the perception of those of us who think of the Manics with him as a band who played to girls with awesome outfits, and the Manics without him as a band who played to Oasis fans (especially given as far as I know said male contributors, they are very much not that lad stereotype), yet there we are.

Despite which, the contributors have been chosen well enough that the pieces on the other albums do still make good reading. I decided early on that I was going to treat the book like a low-stakes contest, Strictly Come Manics or something, and actually give a full listen to one of the sans Richey albums, based on the cases made for them here. Except that got complicated too; Burrows himself builds a plausible case in defence of the "alienated, disappointed, sighing" This Is My Truth, but I still have strong enough memories of my one agonising nineties encounter with that one that it was never going to be in contention (fun fact: several friends assumed I was suffering and displacing a delayed reaction to my first break-up, and I suspect to this day still wouldn't credit my disbelieving "No, seriously, have you heard how bad it is?"). Similarly, Adam Scott Glasspool offers a great redemptive reading of Lifeblood, but I know full well that almost everyone hates that, the band included, so that would just have been silly. And probably the best piece of writing in the book is Burrows' other full essay, on Rewind The Film. It's an elegiac, impressionistic memoir of young love - for a band and for a person, intertwined - and it's a gorgeous read. It's undoubtedly the piece here which will stay with me the most, and you could very nearly not notice how it also frees the book of any obligation for anyone to make a case for the album Rewind The Film. Regarding which, in the culmination of a lovely running joke from the linking timeline sections: "Regrettably, for the first time since 2004, no-one says the new Manics album is 'their best since Everything Must Go.'"
So yeah, anyway, I ended up giving Resistance Is Futile a go on Friday morning. And while it's certainly better than This Is My Truth, if you'd told me it was the third and weakest JDB solo album I would have seen no reason to doubt you. Certainly nothing there fit to touch the hem of Love's Sweet Exile or Sleepflower.

As well as two of the essays proper, a coda on the new album, and some frequently entertaining footnotes to the other contributors' work, Burrows also provides the linking timeline, a bed on which the assessments of the records can rest. As per the 'best album since Everything Must Go' gag mentioned above, he turns what could easily have felt like a plodding obligation into a fun read in its own right, and one which was genuinely quite handy to a lapsed fan like me who hasn't really been following the story since Simon Price's biography Everything. If it's noticeable that the controversies have died down from the scorched earth offensiveness of the early days to occasionally saying something slightly disobliging about Radiohead (who, to be fair, did drop off even more disastrously after a strong 1990s than the Manics), then interest is maintained by things like the various tours which 'coincidentally' enable the band to watch the rugby as part of a work trip, as well as hints of lost projects like the Magnetic Fields-inspired 70 Songs Of Hatred And Failure. With distance, too, comes an inevitable degree of reassessment of the band's whole project. After all, to be a fiery, self-destructive, wilfully divisive band was pretty cool during what felt like the faintly dull consensus culture at the end of history. Now...well, since the end of the end of history, nowadays faintly dull consensus culture doesn't sound like such a bad thing anymore, so no wonder if the Manics have struggled to find a place in the ongoing clusterfuck which is not itself faintly dull. Generally the book has far more sense than to get hung up on provocations from back in the day which would end a career now, though there's some interesting angles on the grand gesture of the Cuba gig, a typically Manics move but one whose significance feels ever muddier as it recedes into the distance.
(Although I was annoyed when Andrzej Lukowski did a Canute with the line "Also, the actual Fidel Castro turned up, with his quip that the gig would be 'louder than war' giving the band a bona fide new slogan." As tends to be the way nowadays, there are a few little glitches and typos scattered through the book, but most are minor and one - "Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons" – would once have been a great music press headline for a Manics piece. This, though, gets the story back to front, which is more of an issue)

So, yeah. Not a book to win me round to the non-Richey Manics, but I'm not sure there's one that could. Certainly one that kept me entertained and engaged along the way, and one which reminded me quite what a fabulous, ludicrous band they were in that long-lost age of their pomp. And it should go without saying that their best album since Everything Must Go was Journal For Plague Lovers.

*To be fair, at least in my youth a lot of what made me like a lot of the records I liked was extratextual. It's never just the music.

(Netgalley ARC)

[Ophelia Sings · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Don't forget the songs/That made you cry/And the songs that saved your life', once sang a (lately troublesome) bequiffed northerner. Well, when it comes to the Manics, I kinda had. Apart from the occasional stab of nostalgia when Motorcycle Emptiness came on the radio, or spying an old (wine stained, still faintly tobacco-scented after several decades) leopard print coat in the back of my wardrobe, I don't give the Manics much thought these days. But there was a time when they were everything, and more.

Manic Street Preachers: Album by Album is a collection of essays, linked by a forensically detailed timeline, detailing the Manics' career. It's also a very personal, often incredibly affecting, catalogue of what the band and their music means to their fans. Sometimes superficial, sometimes searingly moving, fans' memories connected to each album in turn - the losses, the adventures, the discoveries, the fun, the sadness - resonate deeply.

The Manics' later albums have escaped me somewhat. You get older, your teenage heroes melt into the background, it happens. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in all of it - from the gigs I remember, to the albums which have passed me by. And yes, I was inspired to play catch up, to see what I've missed, and in a strange way it felt like a small part of me coming home.

This is a glorious book, and a fitting tribute to a band which deverve not to be forgotten, ever. Silly, silly me.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Damon Hopcroft · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I’m a self confessed manics obsessive and have read every book on the band, I’ve followed them since 92 so am very familiar with their timeline and thought this would be a great book to own since it had it all written down, unfortunately it turned out to be a bit of a let down.
The book is really a list of dates of albums, singles, gigs, major events (which are just stated not explained) each era has a small essay which are usually just a memory from the person writing it, they rarely delve into the actual music and events related to the band it’s more this is my memory of gig/album/introducing a friend etc in fact the essay that accompanies rewind the film doesn’t even mention the album, songs or any relevant manics info from that period. I found just reading a book that is just a list eg
Generation terrorists 1992
23rd February release of ……. Got to number……
3rd march played at….
And a couple of page essay to accompany the era very boring. I expected insight into the era, analysis of the music, what the band stood for/how they related to etc in each era
There are a few dates that are wrong which is quite annoying when you can pick them out quickly, there is typos, some essays are not really related to the era in part or full. I like timelines but at the end of a book not the whole book and they have 13 albums, 2 greatest hits, 1 bsides album and 6 stand alone singles/ep’s so there is only so many times you can read ‘I got into them… ‘first gig’ ‘I went to a gig’ type essays/memory’s. The odd ones which do relate to analysis of the songs, eras are good though.
Though I do understand writing a book about the band must be very difficult there is a culture around them, each era has its own meaning, events, how they related to that time and the general relevance of them at each point so it’s very brave to attempt the complicated task of putting that into a book, to write it down. Maybe that is why they decided to do it in 2/3 page essay and lists.
I would have loved more details on the later albums and the band at the time as currently normal format, story or books only go up to postcards for a young man (a second book from Simon price is what we need)
All in all it’s readable, you can easily dip in and out, check dates of gigs albums,singles, tv shows and the chart positions but unless you have read another book about the band it will not give you much insight into the band, give you the actual story of the band or anything like that but it will give you dates/facts on single releases etc and some people may find the essays interesting if you want fan memories not the band story.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been a great book for my dissertation research on Manics and Welsh identity. However, the essays written by the authors are fantastically written and informative, but the editorial sections have a lot of typos. No one's perfect but a little more attention to detail on the main body of the book would have been nice. Also, I enjoyed reading the editor's short story based on the 'Rewind the film' album, but I find it a bit odd that he deviated away from the structure of the book and didn't include an analysis of that album. I for one would have liked to have seen an essay there instead of a short story. Regardless, the story was still an enjoyable read. A great book none the less and I won't mark it down for these issues so it gets full marks from me!

[Jeanette Greaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the format of this book, it's a chronological history of Manic Street Preachers, divided into album eras, with individual chapters by different Manics fans each sharing their experiences of one of the albums. From Generation Terrorists to Resistance is Futile, with a nod to the then upcoming The Ultra Vivid Lament, this is one for the fans and anyone who is looking into an insight into the Manics, their music and their fans.
I rarely read non-fiction, but as a Manics fan myself, this was too tempting to miss. I did take it slowly, the emotional impact of reading a timeline that I'm so familiar with from my own experiences was quite something.

[Louise Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely one for the fans, this is a thoughtful and insightful recounting of the Manic Street Preachers on an album by album basis. Plenty of context and back story to keep the reader interested!

[Chris Bookley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chaos.

[Mark Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four and a half, rounded up. It’s a simple idea but carried out really well, a chronological diary of Manics events, with a discussion of every album at the appropriate time. Different voices take charge of each album and this adds to the richness of the book; track by track analysis in some places, certain albums filtered through personal stories in others, but this works as part of the whole. Apart from once - which I’m loathe to mention as it is still interesting.

There is a valid explanation given as to why one album discussion is swapped out for a more creative (and excellent) piece of writing, which absolutely has merit. But considering there is even an unexpected discussion of the 2021 album (fresh out when this was published), this leaves just a slight air of incompleteness - I’d have liked to see a chapter more fitting of the other reviews included while the creative piece remained at the start or end.

It really is a work worthy of the band and its fans. The band’s richness and variety is underrated and this book mirrors that.

[Kristian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant retrospective of one of the most popular groups still releasing great music - NO prior knowledge required!

Equal parts thoroughly researched and deeply personal. This collection of essays interspersed with a detailed timeline of events is a fantastic deep-dive into the phenomenon that is the Manics and the fandom surrounding them. Hugely informative without being yet-another band biography, and at times intensely emotional without getting off track.

Before reading this I had listened to maybe a handful of Manics songs. Then Marc waved his keyboard-shaped wand (just as he did with The Magic of Terry Pratchett) and made me a fan. I listened to each album while reading the accompanying essay and about the events around each release, which made for a fab experience all round. Highly recommended for anyone interested in bands, fandoms, personal reactions to music or if you've just been meaning to give the Manics a proper go - there's no better way to get truly into the fake-feathered thick of it.

[Russell Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book it totally fills in every blank and updates you on all the albums just up to The Ultra Vivid lament and if you have Spotify like I do it's great to revisit the albums.
My only criticism is that this book needs proof reading at least every other page there was a typo which is off putting when you're reading about literary greats etc. such as spectators of suice anybody?
A minor quibble though don't let that put you off a great read.

[Kim Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bore everyone that my husband (then boyfriend) used to correspond with Richey when the Manics were playing gigs at youth clubs. My husband isn’t such a fan of their later stuff but I trained my son well and he now comes with me when they play locally. So - great to read the book and it brought back a lot of memories. The various essays are really enjoyable.

[Alexander Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

A welcome effort to chronicle all the releases, tours and major events in Manics history before they slip out of memory. Interspersing this with essays of reflection on each record is a really nice touch and on both counts I would recommend it to any Manics fan and/or musical history enthusiast.

[Jonny Brick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few too many typographical errors, with some essays lapsing into fanzine-type gushes bringing down the strong politically minded essays. A useful companion all the same, full of love and intelligence.

[Mark Fannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolute pleasure to read for a Manics nerd like me. Lovely essays about each album and hilarious facts in the timeline sections