Album Review: Manic Street Preachers - Postcards from a Young Man (2010)

Manic Street Preachers - Postcards from a Young Man (2010)

For a band that once claimed that it would make one incredible album and then disband, ten albums and almost two decades later seems like they sort of failed on that promise. But that's a good thing, because the Manic Street Preachers have not only survived, but they continue to get better with age, as is evident on Postcards from a Young Man (2010), their most joyous musical statement yet.

While there's no denying that Postcards is a far cry from their punkish beginnings as heard on their incendiary debut Generation Terrorists (1992), it truly feels like the band is now where it should be. They've been on a bit of a roller coaster throughout their career, what with their chief lyricist Richey Edwards disappearing off the face of the Earth three albums in and all (only for the band to score big the following year with a mellower sound). This alone was enough of an identity crisis, but when the band hit a ten year bump with the surprisingly mediocre Know Your Enemy (2001), an album that tried and failed at capturing the band's early fire, it seemed that the Manics were on the way out. Fortunately, after a break, the band had a fifteen year renaissance that continues with this latest offering.

Postcards represents the pinnacle of the band latter day rejuvenation, something that began with 2007's excellent Send Away the Tigers. Tigers was both equal parts energy and elegance, something that the band had been in a bipolar conflict with since the 1996 breakthrough Everything Must Go. Yet, from Tigers onward, this was not a problem, and the band finally found and embraced their signature sound. This even applies to the dark but excellent Journal for Plague Lovers (2009), where edginess was reinforced by stark elegance. And just a year later, however, Postcards fully embraces the power of the elegance in a way that both reinforces and progresses the band's recent surge.

For once the band acts its age, and they do so by holding nothing back. The first three tracks, and singles ("(It's Not War) Just the End of Love", the title track, and "Some Kind of Nothingness") make up the most jubilant opening to any Manics album. Each song soars on big guitars, bigger strings, and monumental choral arrangements, yet never does it feel overblown or self-indulgent. Songs like the cascading "Golden Platitudes" or the relentless "A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun" feel more statements of celebratory hope rather than rants of hyperbolic political prose (like on Enemy). Grandiosity doesn't even begin to explain what occurs on Postcards, but it all feels like this is the final communique, so all must be said in big bold stanzas. If this is their last offering, they are going out with a hero's bang! The Manics are preaching to masses one more time, and it's well worth the listen.

McS