Manic Street Preachers - Send Away The Tigers (Album)
On the inside sleeve of the Manic Street Preacher’s new album, Send Away The Tigers, there is a quote from Wyndham Lewis, a British painter and author who started the influential but short-lived Vorticist movement. This cousin of Cubism represented the modern world using bold solid colours and avoided parallel lines. No matter how the pieces looked, the movement existed to smash all the existing stereotypes in art. In short, they tried to be revolutionaries.
It has been well documented that the Manics have strong socialist leanings and they certainly communicate these views through their lyrics. Unlike Vorticism, the musical vehicle that delivers this rhetoric does not approach anything that has not been heard before. It is all big arena vocals, glam guitars and full strings; but it sounds more pointed and less apocalyptic than any Muse record. For all of the serious subject matter, some of the songs almost seem a little whimsical.
This is their first record in three years after the reasonably successful Lifeblood. In the meantime, lead singer James Dean Bradfield and bassist Nicky Wire have released their own solo albums. Mr. Wire explains on their Myspace page that these records were "really important …in a vain kind of way and then realising what we're genuinely great at."
Indeed they have their niche and they haven’t changed: Mr. Bradfield is still not an optimistic gentleman after the fifteen years that the band has been together. Although a lot of the songs give a sense that hope is peeking from underneath the blanket he still tells the listener to "trade you heroes for ghosts". There is also the omnipresent anti-war song included with the rockabilly Imperial Bodybags.
It is a short release, 38 minutes in all, which does not give it any chance to grow and mature. It is big song after big song, parts of which blur together but there is the occasional punchy highlight. The song 'Indian Summer' is one and so is the duet with The Cardigans’ Nina Persson called 'Your Love Is Not Enough'.
Wyndam Lewis said: when a man is young enough he is usually a revolutionary of some kind. So here I am speaking of my revolution.
The Manic Street Preacher revolution is perhaps painting a realistic, if depressing, picture of this modern world with bold, almost grandiose, strokes. Whatever personal views are held by the band, ultimately this is a distinctly British (Welsh), slightly above average, blue collar rock record and not a revolutionary statement. Perhaps they’ve styled themselves on the title of the bonus track, John Lennon’s 'Working Class Hero'.
