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  #46  
Old 04-11-2010, 19:51
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Originally Posted by Aestivate View Post
It follows on from Truth more naturally than KYE. I often wonder if it might have been received better if this had been the case. James guitar work on the album is more inventive and creative than anything he's produced since - it just sort of flows into the landscape and fits the lyrics. It is the outsider that no one talks to and looks at hesitantly. Which is why it is possibly the best Manics album as it doesn't qute fit in.
Those are beautiful words. It's a much maligned album and it took me a while to click with it. The good outweighs the bad for the most. Still don't like emily, fragments and glasnost though. The latter for its clumsy metaphor.
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  #47  
Old 04-11-2010, 19:52
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They pretty much declared it every night they played Empty Souls this tour before dropping it. First it was just general apologies for Lifeblood, and then moving onto telling people to go to the bar...

It was quite embarrassing actually. It pissed me off.
Oh yeah, there was that too. I don't get how they can be so insecure when they're basically the best people ever.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again. Manics fans, never fucking happy.
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  #48  
Old 04-11-2010, 19:52
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Don't understand it. James likes Empires & Dance era Simple Minds as well.
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  #49  
Old 04-11-2010, 19:54
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Don't understand how anyone could not like Glasnost either. It's like not liking Fleetwood Mac's Albatross as well.
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  #50  
Old 04-11-2010, 19:55
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Song For a Departure gets wile repetitive and annoying at the end doesn't it? Not as good as I remembered. Glasnot is a bit shit also! No idea why I ever thought I rated that track. I also forgot how bad I Live To Fall Asleep was. But Always/Never is much better than I remembered! I do quite like it. I'm never going to be a convert to this album. However isolated songs like Empty Souls do sound slightly better though when to listened to as a whole with the record.
I don't think my slagging will ever end, but it annoys me that 2 of the best Manics songs of the past 13 odd years are nestled in on it. Plus to be honest I think TIMTTMY has overtaken it as my most hated. Well maybe. I'm still not sure!
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  #51  
Old 04-11-2010, 19:57
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I remember when I first listened to it and thinking oh dear what have they done. But it has grown on me over the years and I now adore it. 1985 just blows me away :-)
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  #52  
Old 04-11-2010, 19:59
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I don't think my slagging will ever end, but it annoys me that 2 of the best Manics songs of the past 13 odd years are nestled in on it.
Which two?

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Plus to be honest I think TIMTTMY has overtaken it as my most hated. Well maybe. I'm still not sure!
Steady on, that's fighting talk to Gutless Wonder.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again. Manics fans, never fucking happy.
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  #53  
Old 04-11-2010, 20:00
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Aye! No dissing of Truth on my watch!
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  #54  
Old 04-11-2010, 20:15
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tl;dr. Might as fucking well, y'know.

It's my favourite album of all time. Or at least tied in that place.

It was the first Manics studio album I bought brand new, on day of release. Or a few days before day of release actually - I got a whiff of info that some stores had already begun to stock the album a bit before the official release and as soon as I read that, I dug out the cash I had saved for that album for several months, got to the store as fast as I can and did the commercial exchange. And when 1985 first came out of the stereos, I felt such an immense rush of joy that I ended up bouncing all over the room in a fit of pure unabashed glee.

Ever since that it's been a dear, close friend to me. I've listened to it so many times that I know all its little nuances by heart and whenever my ears pick up on those, I get a feeling of peaceful familiarity. It's got me through bad times and it's been the soundtrack to immensely happy days. It's one of the few albums that I've bonded so closely with that whenever it ends, the world looks a bit different for a while and I always find myself just sitting in the silence for a moment and thinking back on the music.

I know the band think that it's an album where they lost themselves, the essence of who they were, but to my ears it's always sounded like the exact opposite. There's a quote I love to bring up whenever I talk about Lifeblood, taken from a review around its release - "Lifeblood is an album where three men first looked at themselves from a mirror, then looked at eachother and then wrote an album about what they saw". To my ears it's always sounded like their most personal album - the one moment in their discography where they completely ignored any outside factors, any kneejerk reactions to their previous albums, everything that they base their musicial decisions on these days. They simply went into a studio, locked themselves in there and recorded an album with no interference of any kind, with only themselves as the judge. The result sounds like a look into their souls.

But yeah. 12 amazing, perfect songs, many of which are my ultimate favourite Manics moments: I honestly can't find a fault in the tracklist. Wire is fantastic lyrically even though his writer's block causes a bit too much repetition - pretty much the only fault I can find on the album - but when he does say something, it's heartfelt, profound and, well, fantastic. Not to mention Cardiff Afterlife is the greatest thing related to Richey in the band's career. The production is divine: beautifully layered and detailed, gorgeously precise in a fashion that allows each of those details and layers to stand out. The performance of the band is their best, from James' singing to refined, subtle guitar style and the tight rhythm section. The mood is wonderful: it's 'elegiac pop' to a tee, in all its beautifully melancholy, somewhat wistful glory expressed through both sound and words (the recurring theme of loss is rather prominent). Even outside the album itself they succeeded: the artwork is fantastic, the visual sense during the era was gorgeous (the all-white look on tours, etc), the b-sides are immense, and so forth. I even think the songs worked excellently live. Plus Sean's hair was ace.

I know it's the most atypical Manics album there is and there's a lot of dislike towards it because it's not your usual guitar rock anthem thingy we've come to expect from the band - even from the band - but the reason I like it so much has nothing to do with the fact that it's such a stylistic odd man out anyway. Manics are one of the most important musical acts in the world to me, if not the most because of their significance in the grand scheme of things in my personal history, and that didn't happen because I wasn't too keen on them rocking about. But Lifeblood came at the right time in my life, presented to me a condensation of so many things and reasons why I love music and then stayed with me. And now it's one of the most important records of my life.

So yeah, I kinda like it.
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Last edited by Flint; 04-11-2010 at 20:18.
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  #55  
Old 04-11-2010, 20:20
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Lifeblood is an ambitious album. Some songs of it work really well with the sound of the album like A Song For Departure and Empty Souls. There are admittedly one or two songs that don't quite work such as The Love Of Richard Nixon or Always/Never, and some songs that would benefit from having louder guitars, 1985, or strings instead of synths (Solitude Sometimes Is). However Lifeblood brings a sound that is unique among Manics albums, and a melancholy that doesn't exist on any of their other albums.
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  #56  
Old 04-11-2010, 20:21
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Originally Posted by sculptureofabloke View Post
Which two?
1985 and To Repel Ghosts. Duh

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Aye! No dissing of Truth on my watch!
hahaha! Sorry, i know the truth is difficult to face!
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  #57  
Old 04-11-2010, 20:26
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hummingbird hummingbird is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint View Post
tl;dr. Might as fucking well, y'know.

It's my favourite album of all time. Or at least tied in that place.

It was the first Manics studio album I bought brand new, on day of release. Or a few days before day of release actually - I got a whiff of info that some stores had already begun to stock the album a bit before the official release and as soon as I read that, I dug out the cash I had saved for that album for several months, got to the store as fast as I can and did the commercial exchange. And when 1985 first came out of the stereos, I felt such an immense rush of joy that I ended up bouncing all over the room in a fit of pure unabashed glee.

Ever since that it's been a dear, close friend to me. I've listened to it so many times that I know all its little nuances by heart and whenever my ears pick up on those, I get a feeling of peaceful familiarity. It's got me through bad times and it's been the soundtrack to immensely happy days. It's one of the few albums that I've bonded so closely with that whenever it ends, the world looks a bit different for a while and I always find myself just sitting in the silence for a moment and thinking back on the music.

I know the band think that it's an album where they lost themselves, the essence of who they were, but to my ears it's always sounded like the exact opposite. There's a quote I love to bring up whenever I talk about Lifeblood, taken from a review around its release - "Lifeblood is an album where three men first looked at themselves from a mirror, then looked at eachother and then wrote an album about what they saw". To my ears it's always sounded like their most personal album - the one moment in their discography where they completely ignored any outside factors, any kneejerk reactions to their previous albums, everything that they base their musicial decisions on these days. They simply went into a studio, locked themselves in there and recorded an album with no interference of any kind, with only themselves as the judge. The result sounds like a look into their souls.

But yeah. 12 amazing, perfect songs, many of which are my ultimate favourite Manics moments: I honestly can't find a fault in the tracklist. Wire is fantastic lyrically even though his writer's block causes a bit too much repetition - pretty much the only fault I can find on the album - but when he does say something, it's heartfelt, profound and, well, fantastic. Not to mention Cardiff Afterlife is the greatest thing related to Richey in the band's career. The production is divine: beautifully layered and detailed, gorgeously precise in a fashion that allows each of those details and layers to stand out. The performance of the band is their best, from James' singing to refined, subtle guitar style and the tight rhythm section. The mood is wonderful: it's 'elegiac pop' to a tee, in all its beautifully melancholy, somewhat wistful glory expressed through both sound and words (the recurring theme of loss is rather prominent). Even outside the album itself they succeeded: the artwork is fantastic, the visual sense during the era was gorgeous (the all-white look on tours, etc), the b-sides are immense, and so forth. I even think the songs worked excellently live. Plus Sean's hair was ace.

I know it's the most atypical Manics album there is and there's a lot of dislike towards it because it's not your usual guitar rock anthem thingy we've come to expect from the band - even from the band - but the reason I like it so much has nothing to do with the fact that it's such a stylistic odd man out anyway. Manics are one of the most important musical acts in the world to me, if not the most because of their significance in the grand scheme of things in my personal history, and that didn't happen because I wasn't too keen on them rocking about. But Lifeblood came at the right time in my life, presented to me a condensation of so many things and reasons why I love music and then stayed with me. And now it's one of the most important records of my life.

So yeah, I kinda like it.

*downloads album to phone*

wish i could write posts like that
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  #58  
Old 04-11-2010, 20:28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harrijack View Post
They pretty much declared it every night they played Empty Souls this tour before dropping it. First it was just general apologies for Lifeblood, and then moving onto telling people to go to the bar...

It was quite embarrassing actually. It pissed me off.
What was embarrassing was actually seeing them do ES. I don't mind the song, but the reaction in Liverpool (the last night they did it) was piss poor. It was plain to see that James was forced into playing it, hence the Wire scissor-kicking all over the place, while James suffered along with the crowd.
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  #59  
Old 04-11-2010, 21:11
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The Gutless Wonder The Gutless Wonder is offline
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Well the crowd should get into it then! What's wrong with ya's?
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  #60  
Old 04-11-2010, 21:11
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Frozendiva Frozendiva is offline
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