Lifeblood reissue announced

[Routine Builder]

Just to clarify, wasn't Firefight a James lyric?

[*Found That Soul*]

Originally Posted by Routine Builder

Just to clarify, wasn't Firefight a James lyric?

He certainly did.

I still can't believe it's been given away on a free EP, single worthy for me.

[Suicide Aldi]

I always thought firefight sounded a bit like Keane

[Marat Sar]

Here's the studio tracklist then, transcribed from the video. Seems coherent enough to be more than just recording notes, more like a first draft running order. Not a bad sequence, though the final album is better. Note how the titles already fit together together well, words per title form a good rhythm visually and feel good to read out -- Manics are masters of this. It goes: adjective noun / noun adverb verb / article noun conjunction noun / preposition verb nouns (plural) / noun (place name) noun / number -- look at how much variety! What a good word rhythm for a tracklist they didn't use!

1. Empty Souls
2. Solitude Sometimes Is
3. A Song for Departure
4. To Repel Ghosts
5. Cardiff Afterlife
6. 1985
7. I Live to Fall Asleep
8. Firefight
9. Emily
10. The Love of Richard Nixon
11. Glasnost
12. Always / Never
13. Fragments
14. Askew Road

I would say they didn't expect TLORN to become as good, looks a bit buried in the tracklist here. Probably surprised them. Askew Road being the intended closer is not surprising, nor is Firefight's ghost-inclusion in the middle of the album, or that they thought To Repel Ghosts could be a "bigger" opening four type song (it had all the hallmarks of one in the rehearsals and demos, surely) -- nor that they thought Empty Souls was an opener. I'm surprised not to see more b-sides and rarities there, they've really whittled it down to pretty close to the release by that time.

[Son of Stopped]

That tracklist. Take out Askew Road and Firefight as you said, and it's pretty much the finished product but all jumbled up. I wonder if the booklet will explain the reasoning behind TLORN being the first single.

[Routine Builder]

The revised tracklisting flows quite well, it slowly ascends and descends. Transitions are nice too, Cardiff Afterlife into 1985 is supreme. Firefight (or at least the version on GSTM) does not belong on this album though, sounds completely off in terms of tone and production.

[Marat Sar]

Originally Posted by Routine Builder

Transitions are nice too, Cardiff Afterlife into 1985 is supreme.

Just had a listen to these two back to back. Wow, so good. Both the abrupt ending of Cardiff Afterlife and the muted opening of 1985 make a lot of sense this way, transition from 1985 to I Live to Fall Asleep is super smooth too. Agreed that Firefight has no place there. From God Save the Manics, Picturesque works better between ILTFA and Emily -- man I always adored that song. What a spooky little twinkle of Richey in the Lifeblood era...

Emily to TLORN is a great transition too, as is TLORN to Glasnost -- even thematically, 70s become 80s.

What I like in this running order is that it places the electronic tinged 1985 and TLORN further apart and nested in the playlist, making them stick out less than Lifeblood's admittedly astonishing and avant garde opening -- the start of a completely different album that then mollifies into a reddish haze.

Definitely gonna mess around with this track order when the rerelease comes out.

EDIT: Jay Beebus how hard Askew Road's ending hits in this playlist.

[theplague]

Is it just me that think TLORN maybe isn’t even good enough to be on the album? Probably their worst single through their entire career, just maybe some single(s) from Futurology beats it to that spot.
Was never impressed by it.
Would even claim that if they wouldn’t have released it as (first) single, the album would have got much more recognition.

[Son of Stopped]

Originally Posted by theplague

Is it just me that think TLORN maybe isn’t even good enough to be on the album? Probably their worst single through their entire career, just maybe some single(s) from Futurology beats it to that spot.
Was never impressed by it.
Would even claim that if they wouldn’t have released it as (first) single, the album would have got much more recognition.

It's still the most out there thing they've released as a single. I love the thinking of it. Bush Jr in the White House. So they sing about Richard Nixon! Doesn't sound like anything the other guitar bands were doing. Tolerate sounded weird. So Why So Sad was definitely not on the 2001 cards. And TLORN took it to breaking point. They've made weird songs since but not used as the lead single. But with Lifeblood, yeah, Always/Never would have been a good breakfast show song.

[theplague]

Originally Posted by Son of Stopped

It's still the most out there thing they've released as a single. I love the thinking of it. Bush Jr in the White House. So they sing about Richard Nixon! Doesn't sound like anything the other guitar bands were doing. Tolerate sounded weird. So Why So Sad was definitely not on the 2001 cards. And TLORN took it to breaking point. They've made weird songs since but not used as the lead single. But with Lifeblood, yeah, Always/Never would have been a good breakfast show song.

I love the thinking of it and the theme, but it doesn’t work as a single. It doesn’t really have a hook and the result isn’t really that interesting. For me or a bigger audience.

[Marat Sar]

TLORN is for me the second best Manics single after If You Tolerate This, and before ADFL and Motorcycle Emptiness. It is subversive, ominous, heartful, bratty, atmospheric and eternally mysterious. A time travel song, a window into another time. The lyrics are some of the best they've ever put to tape, hair raising stuff, "the love of your mother" "the feat of the future" -- and James' baritone delivery is both an outlier in his catalogue and a career high. Flat, clean, unusually sexy for him -- adding surreal sex appeal to literally the least sexy take imaginable in 2004. Remember Richard Nixon everyone? He was actually a good guy and we all betrayed him. An actor's vocal take, nothing like himself. And by god those backing vocals in the verses are well arranged.

It's the song that got me into the Manics. Woke me up to the fact that these guys are conceptual masterminds. Not just "critically acclaimed" or whatever, but a real Einstürzende Neubauten / Kino level singular cultural asset.

The song also has flawless production, an immensely well done kick drum and heaps of incredibly interesting sound effects and my god the mix in the guitar solo is a world onto itself. I still to this day discover new things about that mix every time I listen to it -- and I've listened to TLORN for what at least feels like 4000+ times.

And it doesn't stop there! The video is also just perfect for the song, them in those Nixon masks completely distancing from the rest of reality into this sublime in-joke. Here they really fulfilled the promise they found in Kevin Carter -- that they could put ANYTHING to music now. Richey would've been proud of this one I think. My god what an alien presence that video was on 2004's MTV. Me and a friend were watching TV at my place -- neither was that into the Manics, we just knew and appreciated Tolerate. And we just fell absolutely silent for 4 minutes and then went, unanimously: wow. Those ominous crawling synths and then the conclusion: "yeah we all betrayed you, yeah and your country too". We need to give this album a listen -- now.

Been a fan ever since.

Aaaaand it doesn't stop there. The single art is ALSO exceptional. Oh the the luxury! Compare it to what we get now, not just from the Manics, but from any band. Three different versions of the single, each with a different band member in that fuck-off Richard Nixon mask. Each with its own set of b-sides, and they are:

Everything Will Be
Askew Road
Everyone Knows / No One Cares
Voodoo Polaroids
Quarantine (In My Place of)

Wow. That's an entire EP's worth of excellent material -- three of which, in an absolutely amazing twist, further extend on the sonics and themes of the single. Everything Will Be, Askew Road and especially Everyone Knows No One Cares form a kind of Richard Nixon Suite. Even Voodoo Polaroids and Quarantine, though rough cuts, sorta fit into it.

It's just amazing stuff.

Tldr -- different songs have different effects on people. TLORN rocked my world

It was, however, a fuck you to the world. And if you tell the world fuck you some people will not go "wow, fuck me? thanks you, so cool Jimmy Rockstar!", some will go: "How about fuck you instead". It's sorta what happened to U2 around POP. They made an absolute fuck-you album (Wake Up Dead Man, anyone?) and people were like: why's Bono telling me to fuck myself? I don't like this. And then they turned around and became sychophantic crowd pleasers as if to say: sorry. U2 never recovered from the slapback to POP, thank God Manics did. Rewind the Film and Futurology were a return to conceptual form for me, though they've never gone so deep and so strange as they did with Lifeblood -- and TLORN is the absolute apex of that.

That said -- they should have released 1985 as the second single, not Empty Souls. Empty Souls was a fuck-off too far / not far enough (omitting the Twin Towers line).

EDIT: Sorry for the weird megalong post, I have nothing to do.

[IntlDebris]

I remember hearing TLORN for the first time and just thinking... wow, they've gone and done it, they've really pushed themselves to not sound like the Manics. Not just a sprinkling of keys, a full-on electronic track, with James singing in a totally different register to normal. That this was the lead single suggested the album might be even bolder.

It doesn't seem like an obvious choice, but neither does Tolerate, which always struck me as a far less commercial track than, say, You Stole the Sun. I get why it put a lot of people off, though. It's the least Manicsy song on a Manics album, really. It's the opposite of what a lot of people want from the band. It's always been one of my favourites, though.

Firefight has that 'mixed in a small studio down the road for £50' sound that all the Empty Souls b-sides also have, which is a shame. I can imagine it on the album more than Quarantine and Voodoo Polaroids, though - the latter, in particular, sounds like a full-on KYE throwback. Picturesque fits in with the more acoustic side of the sessions, like All Alone Here and Antarctic. Secret Society is such a weird outlier that doesn't sound like it belongs from this era of the band at all.

Absolutely unrelated, but as I have GSTM on the Japanese Lipstick Traces, the final bonus track on that album always baffled me. Where's it even from? An edit of EMG with part of the final chorus cut out. I don't spot it on any of the EMG promos. I thought it might be the acoustic version from the Kevin Carter tape at first, but nope, just the album version with 30 seconds cut.

Askew Road is definitely closer material, but it doesn't quite beat the bluntness of Cardiff Afterlife. I remember rumours at the time that it was going to be their last album, and that song - and ending - always felt like a strangely fitting way to go out.

[ohsoso]

Originally Posted by Marat Sar

Three different versions of the single, each with a different band member in that fuck-off Richard Nixon mask.

i get where you're going with this. i thought it was hilarious and an awesome concept. can't agree about it being even single material music - but b-side. still love it. felt a bit underwhelmed by the rest of the album when it was released as i thought it would have been more in that vein.

as for the video i guess they took it from where the buffalo roam.

[Europa Gluten Free]

TLORN was their last great artistic move. Art for art's sake. But it felt forced and out of touch with everything. They were trying too hard.

I think the album concept of elegiac pop was fine - it's just the songs were not strong enough. Also their 'Radio 1 one of the biggest bands in the UK' moment had passed and they struggled with that. Plus life, families, etc.

I still listen to the album a lot in terms of Manics albums I would listen to. Reminds me of a good time in my life.

[theplague]

Yeah, conceptually/artistically the song is a great achievement. Or a great idea at least.
Not a good single in Manics terms.
These are different things.