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Old 08-01-2019, 12:26
IntlDebris IntlDebris is offline
I am purity, they call me perverted
 
Join Date: May 2015
Posts: 304
Got into the Manics through EMG - was 11/12 at the time I was buying all the singles from the album, got the album itself with Christmas money at the end of '96. Definitely got into them more than the other guitar bands I was listening to at the time (the obligatory Oasis and Blur). My only real source of music news at the time was on ceefax and teletext... I do remember thinking by '98 that maybe the Manics had broken up, it was so long since they'd released anything. My taste had expanded a lot and I was listening to loads of other stuff... still, when Tolerate came out I snapped up the single (borrowed some money off my mum to afford both CDs and the tape). It was totally different from what I was expecting - ambient guitar intro, huge long outro, five minutes long - but I immediately loved the melancholy of it. I remember going for a birdwatching trip with my dad a couple of days later (my 14th birthday - I was a seriously cool kid, obviously). Strangely I persuaded him to listen to the charts on the car radio on the way back, and was over the moon to find they'd hit number 1!

I bought the album on the week of release. My parents had bought a new hi-fi with a MiniDisc deck, and I had a personal MD player / recorder (I made my own music - the idea of being able to record digitally and create an album of skippable tracks like a CD was mindblowing) so I decided to get the MD version of the album. Thought it was absolutely brilliant on listening. I remember coming across a couple of reviews complaining it wasn't like their earlier stuff, not as heavy, James's voice less raw... I hadn't heard the earlier albums, but I just thought "surely this is a good thing... none of that loud screaming rubbish". Although I later bought the Richey-era albums and enjoyed them, I never had a teen angst phase and still prefer the refined, melodic, melancholic approach of much of the band's later stuff.

It was a nice time. I had no real contact with the fanbase, never saw them live, just enjoyed the album in the context of it being an album. The following year I started a new school and met a fan who was into the whole glitter / glam stuff who, along with discovering the internet, helped me learn the error of my ways and prefer the earlier stuff - I was very excited about KYE's rawer sound - and then I moved to university without a minidisc player. I didn't end up with a CD copy of Truth until about ten years ago, so went for quite a few years without listening to the album, at which point it sank to near the bottom of my list based on its reputation alone.

Then a few years ago I listened to it again and realised that, no, my initial impression was right: this is a beautifully crafted, gorgeously melodic, atmospheric album. It became my favourite Manics album again and remains so to this day. I'm a lot more confident in my own opinions these days and discovering how much I love TIMT played a big part of that.
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