The "Know Your Enemy" Appreciation Thread

[Son of Stopped]

To counter the myth that "Know Your Enemy" damaged the Manics? Here's a thread to celebrate the 2001 (eventual) masterpiece! Maybe 9 years is the right amount of years to grow to love it? I can still listen to it in full. It's unfair it's blamed as the album that reduced their sound to "Rubble and shit"?
I think the "rubble and shit" years were the greatest hits, Lipstick Traces, and then an attempt to do something different (which even then was brilliant) and then jump back to the Past,Present,Future rock band?

I'd still have preferred the two albums "Solidarity" and "Door To The River" (Is this what they were going to be called?) but at least we got Know Your Enemy rather than nothing at all?
It might be different for newer fans who've only heard the album this year, but I see it as the last Manics album to get away with things they wouldn't get away with now. Not just Miss Europa Disco Dancer and Wattsville Blues, but the whole thirst to "try something different" seems to now appear indulgent and it would be hard to imagine another band doing an album like this today? So there's that to also marvel at!

That said, "Intravenous Agnostic" should have been the joint single with "So Why So Sad" and although the album had strong b-sides, the basic lyrics of "Pedestal" wouldn't have sounded as good next to "The Convalescent", "The Year Of Purification" (That was another missed REM-type single) and "His Last Painting".

Plus the album was responsible for my greatest FD moment (bearing in mind, someone might have done this before?) http://www.foreverdelayed.org.uk/for...37&postcount=1

So I will always love Know Your Enemy and if you are putting it off buying it due to people badmouthing it?... They are wrong! And even if I'm not right, I'll still think this is one of their best albums? It doesn't deserve to be "The Last Manics Album To Sell In A Second Hand Shop"?
Break ranks KYE fans and rejoice! (Or merge with any other positive KYE threads...)