albums and tracks

Editor's rating

Listening to Journal For Plague Lovers is depressing for all the right reasons. Some 14 years after his disappearance, Nicky Wire, James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore have used the lyrics band figurehead Richey Edwards left behind. What's depressing about it may come as no surprise. Now, in 2009, it's as though time has stood still in Richey's absence, the themes which preoccupied him still relevant: the futility of war; the oppressive nature of consumerism and vanity.

It's protest music for the here and now. As Courtney Love once mumbled: "Well, I'm not psychic, but my lyrics are..." Presumably Edwards would have choked on his own eyeliner if he was here to witness a bunch of supermarket chains refusing to display the album's artwork. They'll take your money, for sure - but you can't look at the striking artwork because it might, in the right light and if you're in the wrong mood, look so much like a child's bleeding face that it causes you to have a nervous breakdown somewhere near the frozen food aisle.

And it seems it isn't just listeners getting fired up by the deployment of Richey's lyrics. After suffering a seemingly endless drool of mindless anaesthesia from James Dean Bradfield for the last however many years, the passion is finally back. On 'She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach', he turns his voice on a knife edge and sings with the passion of a man who has something to say for himself. And on 'This Joke Sport Severed', which builds from an acoustic number to a string-laden crescendo, his voice is impassioned; both strong and wavering at once.

Disappointingly, the moment the fire stops raging is the point at which the band, and Steve Albini (who does an excellent job producing - sorry, recording the album), decide to hand vocal duties to Nicky Wire for 'William's Last Words'. Lyrically, it's the most straightforward melancholic song on the album. The potential was there to break a few hearts with a killer ending, but they gave the microphone to Nicky Wire. Who cannot sing.

Despite this massive oversight, though, Journal For Plague Lovers regains much of the vitriol and balls-out obnoxiousness of the early Manics. A return to form for old fans, and a wake up call for the others.

Hayley Avron