Manic Street Preachers - Resistance is Futile

The Quietus

Approaching a new Manic Street Preachers record for the first time is always a strange experience. They are a band with an array of distinctive musical tropes – unabashed and glistening riffs, bombastic waves of orchestral strings – and also a band for whom no album is ever like anything they’ve done before. As a group who perpetually seem to look both forwards and backwards, it can take a while to figure out exactly where they stand, and where exactly they’re going.

Resistance Is Futile is particularly tricky to decipher. It has been four years since they last produced a studio LP, their career-highlight pan-European monolith Futurology, the longest wait between Manics records ever. In that gap they lost their long-term Cardiff studio, toured two anniversary album-in-full shows for The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go and, by their own admission, struggled to find a way for new material to slot into place.

Futurology and its sister-album Rewind The Film felt like the end of an era, the natural and fitting conclusion of a cycle in which the band were revitalised and relevant in a way they hadn’t been since the 90s. Following that up after such a long time away is a daunting task.

It’s not as if the band haven’t made ‘comeback’ albums before, but where Everything Must Go in 1996 followed the disappearance of Richey Edwards and Send Away The Tigers in 2007 followed an extended period of relative mediocrity, Resistance Is Futile finds the Manics forced to regroup after a colossal and climactic success rather than a period of emotional or creative strife.

It is to their credit, then, that for the most part they have embraced their natural feelings of confusion about their state as a band in 2018. Lead single ‘International Blue’ might seem on first impression like an attempt to recapture that ‘Design For Life’ resurgent bombast, but in the context of the rest of the record it revels in rich and strangely celebratory melancholia.

Lyrically the album is about finding solace in the things you love, as an escape from a reality that can be confusing and difficult to navigate. Though the world around them is tumultuous and terrifying, the Manics seek stability in art, culture and the things they love; there are songs here in tribute to the paintings of Yves Klein, the poetry of Dylan Thomas and the photographs of Vivian Maier. Their lyrics are entirely on the nose and were it another band writing them they might be dismissed as simplistic; what prevents that is the unabashed passion that underpins them all. Part of the Manics’ charm has been their boyish delight in sharing their influences, and here that charm and passion is enough to carry a whole record.

Take ‘Liverpool Revisited’. It is melodramatic and passionate, with Wire’s lyrics narrating a time he was overcome by tears, wandering around Liverpool with his polaroid camera and musing on the city’s physical beauty and its defiant fight for justice following the Hillsborough disaster. Its lyrics are simple and direct – ‘As I wake to a sunset, the light dances on the Mersey / And I think of the 96 as the tears fall down on me’ – and its music is bombastic. In other hands it would be mawkish, but in the Manics’ it is genuinely touching.

Musically the record is unfortunately lopsided. Aside from ‘Liverpool Revisited’ and ‘International Blue’, there is a tendency to rely too heavily on a sombre verse plus anthemic string-laden chorus for the first half of the LP. Opener ‘People Give In’ is an acceptable statement of intent, but when third track ‘Distant Colours’ does essentially the same thing, it’s already a little wearisome. ‘Dylan And Caitlin’ – a duet with The Anchoress that sees her and James Dean Bradfield inherit the roles of Dylan Thomas and his wife – is an enjoyable pop duet, but too overglossed, direct and traditional to find a whole lot of depth in.

They settle in the second half, as if they’ve become more comfortable with their malaise and have lost the need to counter it with a jarring epic surge. ‘Hold Me Like A Heaven’ shows that they still have the power for unabashed pop writing, and recalls their superb recent cover of Fiction Factory’s ‘Feels Like Heaven’, while ‘Broken Algorithms’ simmers with momentum and intent. The final two songs are their strongest ending to an album in absolutely ages. ‘Song For The Sadness’ tows a more elegant line between glossy melody and downcast undertones, and the Wire-led ‘The Left Behind’ is slathered in irresistible and moving pathos and self-pity: “I never wanted you to change / I prefer to stay the same.”

This is an unusual Manics album, and perhaps their most unfocused musically since 2001’s stylistic mish-mash Know Your Enemy. But, unlike on that record, here the band are self-aware and all the more captivating for it. “Are we living in the past, where there’s nothing left to fear? / Won’t you say that you love me? Tell me what I want to hear,” sings James Dean Bradfield on ‘Distant Colours’. This is not the Manics’ best album, but it is one of their most charming. As a document of where they stand it is endlessly fascinating.

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Drowned In Sound 60

Maybe they’ve been around for so long now that we inevitably take them for granted, but it almost feels like the diversity of the Manics’ back catalogue gets overlooked. Perhaps that’s because they’ve revisited familiar territory on a few occasions in the last decade, with Postcards From a Young Man and Send Away the Tigers evoking Everything Must Go and [Rewind the Film’s tone bearing a resemblance to This is My Truth Tell Me Yours. By-and-large, though, the 26 years since Generation Terrorists have seen numerous stylistic twists and turns. There’s definitely been the odd misstep, but I’ll always find them ten times more interesting than the any other arena-level bands.

The opening lines of Resistance is Futile herald warning signs, though. When James sings "People get tired. People get old", it elicits a similar sentiment to the lesser moments of 1999’s unlikely super-hit This is My Truth, which occasionally felt like different ways of saying ‘we’re knackered but we’re doing our best’. ‘People Give In’ eventually clunks a gear or two higher but it’s a curious choice of opener all the same, presumably aiming for majesty but landing on inertia instead.

Once ‘International Blue’ kicks in, though, it becomes abundantly clear that there’s life in the Manics yet. If you asked a casual observer what a typical Manic Street Preachers song sounds like, chances are this is the sort of thing they’ll have in mind. James Dean Bradfield’s huge melody instils it with all the appeal of the band’s finest arena-filling singalongs, while Nicky Wire’s lyrical tribute to French artist Yves Klein is among his most focused work in years, making it a worthy sister song to ‘Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning)’ from Everything Must Go.

These aren’t the only times on Resistance is Futile that the ghosts of old songs and bygone days loom heavily. Even by Manics standards, this is a pretty nostalgic record. ‘Liverpool Revisited’ isn’t their first song about Hillsborough, but it’s certainly their best, a gorgeous love letter to the 96 and those who fought for 20 years for justice on their behalf. Lyrically, it’s another strong piece of work by Wire, blending wistfulness and anger, as he eulogises how “The light dances on the Mersey” and lamenting “All the hatred they tried to throw at you, but you stayed so strong”.

While James Dean Bradfield has never been shy of sharing vocal duties, his willingness to cede control of the mic has been even more pronounced in recent years, with duets cropping up more frequently than ever. The Anchoress joins a strong cast of collaborators on ‘Dylan and Caitlin’, and her inclusion is an inspired choice with her rich voice blending luxuriously with the sumptuous strings and the none-more-Manics refrain of “Together the tenderness cries”.

It’s a shame then, that a record with such impressive peaks should be hamstrung by its less inspired moments. The likes of ‘Sequels of Forgotten Wars’ and ‘Hold Me Like a Heaven’ drift by without much to cling on to, and these aren’t isolated examples on the album’s second side. They’re not bad songs as such but pretty forgettable and it’s hard to shake the feeling that the album noticeably runs out of steam. That’s quite frustrating when it contains such life-affirming evidence that the Manics’ creative flame continues to burn brightly. Being a Manic Street Preachers fan was never a smooth ride, though, and Resistance is Futile is another curious chapter in the story of a band whose imperfection is one of their most endearing features.

The Guardian 60

(Columbia)

At first glance, the title of Manic Street Preachers’ 13th album hits like one among the many ebullient slogans they’ve fired out over the years. All rock’n’roll is homosexual! Self-disgust is self-obsession! Resistance is futile! Yet their latest aphorism, an unlikely borrowing from hive-minded Star Trek villains the Borg, comes as loaded with melancholy as provocation. These songs, in which the rough-edged art-punk core of the Manics’ earliest days needles through mature, accomplished lushness, are heavy with a sense of the passing of all things and an uncertainty about their place in the world: “There will be no parades for the likes of us / The wars we fight are doomed to be lost,” frets the glitteringly sharp Sequels of Forgotten Wars.

For every note of defeat, though, there’s a roar of defiance. People Give In also asserts that “people stay strong”, its music box-like guitar line ricocheting anxiously up and down before resolving into a sunburst-through-clouds riff’n’string chorus. International Blue’s tribute to Yves Klein, too, glows with bright energy and hope, while Dylan & Caitlin, featuring the Anchoress, turns the darkness of the Thomases’ alcoholic romance into an effervescent homage to Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.

The Guardian 60

(Columbia)

Catchy orchestral pop-rock crafted to call back the Manics’ late-90s imperial era, or hollow heritage bombast, an insult to the trio’s long-lost teenage fury? Maybe Resistance Is Futile is both. The pleasurable frisson of cognitive dissonance ripples throughout. Preemptive nostalgia says we should cherish acts such as these, before they disappear forever. With their tragic history and dizzying intelligence, the Manics could never be just another band. Although sometimes that’s exactly how they sound. And even worse, that other band is Stereophonics.

What saves the Manics are their lyrics – splinters in the soft oak of the music. “Here’s my gift to you – a soundtrack to the void”, promises International Blue, a sleek anthem to Yves Klein. Even as Coldplay-ish, arena-roof-rattler Hold Me Like a Heaven surfs on a tide of stirring oh-oh-ohs, it lets you know “I hate the world more than I hate myself”. Hillsborough postscript Liverpool Revisited is a touch mawkish and awkward – meme patio poet rather than manic street preacher – but also tender and empathetic. A remarkable band, still wrestling with the most difficult issues, still searching for beauty in the void.