Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed

Genre Alternative Pop/Rock Brit Pop

year: 2002 - review: Great songs by manics, Not many bands can open a song with the words Libraries gave us power, tackle working-class identity and still place the song near the top of the charts, as Manic Street Preachers did in 1996 with the Celtic roar of “A Design for Life.” Four years after they began, the Welsh band was starting over as a trio after depressive guitarist Richey Edwards vanished. (He’s presumed dead; his body has never been found.) The Manics’ rousing songs are as ferocious and political as Public Enemy’s in their pomp, though the enthusiasm for weighty issues sinks some of their best tunes. “Culture sucks down words” is the less-than-snappy line that opens the aching “Motorcycle Emptiness,” which is about existential despair. (Other fave topics: bulimia, suicide, Sylvia Plath, class warfare.) In recent years these Clash-obsessed firebrands have mellowed — recent tracks describe the sound of a dark, truculent, thoughtful band settling into domesticity.