Send Away The Tigers
(Red Ink)
4 out of 10
13 years have passed since the disappearance of Manic Street Preachers’ former songwriter Richey James Edwards, the man that defined the image that placed the Welsh band on the map from the beginning. The remaining three members of the band have, at least up till now, done a shining job of honoring his spirit; they issued fantastic treatments of some of his final lyrics on their 1996 album Everything Must Go, and have reserved a quarter of their total royalties in the event that he return to recover them. In addition, they’ve managed to produce material as good as (and in some instances even better than) a lot of their Richey-era work. A few issues seem to have arisen recently with maintaining this healthy equilibrium of rememberance and the Manics’ dynamic as a trio, however, and they appear ostensibly on their eighth (fifth post-Richey) album, Send Away The Tigers.
Before descending into a full scale firebombing upon the legendary band’s efforts, it’s necessary to articulate what the band has done right for the past four albums. The Manics, after losing their sole key to credibility in glam punk circles, most likely knew that they couldn’t carry on the unforgivingly brash sounds and violently macabre themes that their tortured scribe helped foster. So, from then on out, they became a trio largely influenced by power pop and arena rock, surviving on musicality, subtlety, and stark contrast rather than pure anger and misery. Frontman James Dean Bradfield would soon flesh out the full beauty of his elastic aggro howls and keen eye for strategic annunciation, and with more time to focus on working together, him and bassist/lyricist Nicky Wire created stronger songs in melody, at least if not in words. This trio would grow to become an outfit of a whole new scope, crafting masterpieces like 2001’s ultra-eclectic Know Your Enemy and 2005’s gorgeous, twee-tinged Lifeblood. It’s in 2007, with the bandmembers inching nearer towards their 40’s, that the Manics hit the wall by thoughtlessly trying to emulate their Richey-era work. The result, SATT, is not only the worst album of the band’s entire history, it’s also their very first misstep and the only album of theirs that’s truly difficult to enjoy in its entirety.
The most notable fault of the record is its entire aesthetic approach. First, in failing to acknowledge that they’ve been very successful by distancing themselves from their early sound in recent years, they’re attempting something that is plain ignorant rather than artistically adventurous. Secondly, whilst many of their previous albums had their own special small touches that transformed songs from good to beautiful, nearly every track on SATT floods the palette with blaring guitars and the occasional lazy string arrangement made to sound as if it was ripped straight from Metallica’s S&M. The entire record is a blatant exercise in neglect of detail, as if the guys went into the studio like it was Margaritaville, hoping to ignite wet dreams about the olden days whilst failing to look at themselves and realize that they look like complete buffoons. Nicky Wire even admits on the band’s website that, whenever Bradfield recorded one of his acclaimed, skilled, ambitious guitar solos for the album, he would yell at him to “quit wanking”. Perhaps pretension serves them a lot better than leisure.
Imagine my excitement, as a devout Manics fan, at seeing a new Manics track, “Underdogs”, up for free download on their website. Then imagine my subsequent disgust upon hearing its sweaty, post-grunge riffing and its even sweatier pedestrian musings. As if their fanbase hadn’t become a collective smorgasbord of vibrant personalities, “Underdogs” stands as an unnecessary pandering towards youth, as Bradfield unconvincingly croons “This one’s for the freaks” and spontaneously makes the suspect proposition that “People like you need to fuck/Need to fuck people like me”. The only decent part of “Underdogs” is Sean Moore’s workmanlike drumming, an element the band could always rely on. Equally unnecessary is the album’s lead single, the bouncy “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”. Featuring precious vocals from The Cardigans’ Nina Persson, it’s an admittedly lovable and catchy stab at Motown homage. Although it warrants repeated listens due to the infectious core melodies, the lack of craftsmanship and obnoxious use of strings makes Know Your Enemy’s Motown-influenced track, “So Why So Sad”, seem a whole lot better. The worst part of “YLAINE”, however, is that as a pop song it seems awfully out of place in an album intended to push forward a set of snaggle-toothed ballads stuffed with rock-n-roll fierocity.
So the tracks the band placed forward pre-release to promote the record are both relative throwaways. This is a problem, sure, but wouldn’t that suggest that the rest of the record gets down to business and delivers with gritty, immediate Manics slayers, slicing through racks of clothes at Wal-Mart with eyeliner caked on the face, hammer and sickle in hand, and CCCP carved in the chest? Not at all, really. The post-grunge guitar perspiration mentioned earlier is literally all over this album. In the title track, Bradfield’s guitar is tuned for Giants Stadium, lumbering through a Celtic riff under a thousand layers of clichéd distortion. On “Imperial Bodybags”, a rockabilly feel is embarrassingly composed, once again, under even more distortion. “Autumnsong” starts off with a riff ripped straight out of Slash’s book and launches into a Freddy Mercury-esque harmony a minute later. One could guess that none other than distortion fills in the gaps. A hidden track is tacked onto “Winterlovers”, and it’s a cover of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero”, which Green Day had also covered almost simultaneously. Fitting, seeing as it is impossible to tell the difference between James Dean Bradfield’s clunky guitar on SATT and Billie Joe Armstrong’s on American Idiot.
The beautiful moments that have garnered the past few Manics albums have now been replaced with embarrassing ones on an almost equal proportion, and the songs as a whole ultimately flounder from a combination of that, Wire’s suddenly uninspiring lyrics and Bradfield’s underwhelming melodies. The only time where songcraft triumphs over these moments is on the heartfelt “The Second Great Depression”, a first-person story of economic turmoil tearing apart personal relationships. Of course the distortion exists on this track just like on all others, but this track serves as respite from the constant focus upon the guitars on the rest of the record. A simple melody drives forward startling emotional ruminations to create a ballad that stands in the realm of your Bon Jovis, Hinders, and Nickelbacks in style without displaying the mindlessly cheesy aesthetics of the aforementioned. Perhaps “The Second Great Depression” is what American rock radio should be giving constant rotation to as opposed to the insipid trash of Daughtry.
It is heartbreaking for a Manics fan to have to say that only one track on one of their albums is worth listening to, but this is the reality with Send Away The Tigers. As talk of this album being the Manics’ last escalates and continued mindless praise from the English music press for this album piles up, the greatest band Wales has ever seen continues to stuff more money into a jar labeled “Richey’s Royalties”. Will they ever stop to think about how insulting their tagging of his legacy onto this album is? It’s difficult to say, but what’s easier to tell is that a spectacle like this certainly won’t influence a reclusive Richey Edwards to rise out of the hippie markets of Goa to return to the public eye.
Key Track: “The Second Great Depression”
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