Manic Street Preachers
Send Away The Tigers

THE REVIEW

In the past, I confess I have never been a great fan of the Manic Street Preachers, especially those that included the late (although his fate is actually unknown) Richey 'Manic' Edwards. Too epic, too redundant, their style seemed to me a kind of baroque neopunk that had made them irreparably unpleasant to me. But already in 1996 with "Everything Must Go" and the track "A Design For Life" things changed.

The emphasis of the first three albums gave way to a melancholic and intimate rock, sung with great emotion and involvement by James Dean Bradfield, without losing the energy and rock spirit of the Welsh band. The new course was perfected with "This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours", a masterpiece album, which included, among others, their most successful composition ever: that bittersweet torch-song "If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next" which dominated the airwaves in the summer of 1998. Then two minor albums "Know Your Enemy" and "Lifeblood", interspersed with a collection of hits.

2007 sees them return to the scene and with caution, I approach this new CD enclosed in a mysterious cover depicting two busty teenagers dressed respectively as an angel and devil, both with a sly expression. "Send Away The Tigers" reads the title... "Send Away The Tigers"... and it would almost seem like an admonition addressed to the two girls depicted in the artwork. The lettering used and the R's written backward seem curiously to recall the style of "The Holy Bible", an album prior to "Everything Must Go" and considered at the time a "transition" work.

But the listen to the first track is an unexpected surprise: "Send Away The Tigers" starts with a wall of guitars, a driving rhythm, and an extraordinary vocal in a building chorus, where Bradfield's 'falsetto' literally breaks your heart. It is a pulsating bass and a captivating drum that open the subsequent "Underdogs", an exciting neopunk ride, and the intriguing voice of Nina Persson of the Cardigans that gives vital energy to the duet with Bradfield in the striking single "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough".

It continues with two intriguing glam ballads "Indian Summer" and "The Second Great Depression" (the latter very close to the style of the excellent Mansun, a band with whom the Preachers shared many live stages in 1998). And then again the raw rock'n'roll - à la Stones - of "Rendition" and the epic majesty of "Autumnsong" which seems an unlikely cross between Guns'n Roses, Queen, and Marc Bolan's T-Rex, after a shared session with David Bowie and the Sex Pistols. Still street rock with 'glam' veins in "I'm Just A Patsy" and "Imperial Bodybags" to close with the unusual sweetness of "Winterlovers" which, among explosions and implosions, closes the album but leaves in store a hidden surprise precisely three minutes into the track: a personal and very 'bluesy' reinterpretation of John Lennon's track "Working Class Hero", curiously inserted as a hidden track.

"Send Away The Tigers" is undoubtedly a masterpiece, an album that attests to the health and well-being that rock of the 2000s still enjoys. And it goes straight into my 2007 playlist. Great respect for the Manic Street Preachers who, despite the ups and downs in their career, have returned in sparkling form and as if they had rejuvenated by at least ten years.

More than the Darkness!!!