Listening to 'This is My Truth Tell Me Yours' again this evening. What a brave album - I remember having a bit of an argument with my NME-loving stepbrother about it, when NME slated the album and he said the Manics had fallen off. As far as I'm concerned he's a groupthink moron and this is their second-best album, with the large-scale politics put aside for a minute and the personal-is-political becoming the focus (the war veteran from La Tristessa reappearing in 'If you Tolerate This', the lyrical genius of My Little Empire). And some of the songs are not political at all - these songs are by far the best examples of Nicky Wire's writing before he got tired and cliched ('Autumnsong' from Send Away the Tigers being a particularly cringeworthy example). But here, 'Born a Girl', 'Be Natural' and 'I'm not Working' are lyrically incisive, scathingly honest and emotionally undiluted. James and Sean's instrumentation is lilting, aching and sympathetic - totally different to anything prior to this record, save perhaps 'Little Black Flowers' from EMG. The reverb/echo in 'I'm not working' emphasises the emptiness felt in the lyric 'just this fucking space', and this along with Pearl Jam's 'Unemployable' are the only songs I know that tackle this deep-set human fear. Beautiful.
Listening to 'This is My Truth Tell Me Yours' again this evening. What a brave album - I remember having a bit of an argument with my NME-loving stepbrother about it, when NME slated the album and he said the Manics had fallen off. As far as I'm concerned he's a groupthink moron and this is their second-best album, with the large-scale politics put aside for a minute and the personal-is-political becoming the focus (the war veteran from La Tristessa reappearing in 'If you Tolerate This', the lyrical genius of My Little Empire). And some of the songs are not political at all - these songs are by far the best examples of Nicky Wire's writing before he got tired and cliched ('Autumnsong' from Send Away the Tigers being a particularly cringeworthy example). But here, 'Born a Girl', 'Be Natural' and 'I'm not Working' are lyrically incisive, scathingly honest and emotionally undiluted. James and Sean's instrumentation is lilting, aching and sympathetic - totally different to anything prior to this record, save perhaps 'Little Black Flowers' from EMG. The reverb/echo in 'I'm not working' emphasises the emptiness felt in the lyric 'just this fucking space', and this along with Pearl Jam's 'Unemployable' are the only songs I know that tackle this deep-set human fear. Beautiful.