Originally Posted by The Gutless Wonder (Post 2097169)

Is I Know The Numbers up on Youtube or anything? Not heard it yet. :(

Originally Posted by MSPKYE (Post 2097206)

iTunes, there's a special iTunes download EP

Originally Posted by Sevana Ohandjanian

The albums keep coming thick and fast from Manic Street Preachers, whose 2009 effort, Journal for Plague Lovers, featured the lyrical remnants of missing presumed dead member Richey Edwards, and was praised accoringly as being the Welsh trio's best record in a long time. Having paid fitting tribute to their lost bandmate Postcards from a Young Man returns the listener to modern day Manics. Which sadly includes a lot of posturing, preaching and for this reviewer, cringing. When exactly the Manics fell into the pit of self-congratulatory soft rock is uncharted, but here we are. Postcards is brimming with overblown orchestral strings, choral backing and a whole lotta James Dean Bradfield vocals. He clearly believes in every word he utters as his shouting, pervasive vocals carry infinite sentimental weight. Some Kind of Nothingness marries all these elements gorgeously, for a sway your hands in the air stadium-sized song that concentrates on the modern malaise, while The Descent 1 & 2 uses marching percussion and Bradfield's quasi-scream to drive its message home.

Elsewhere on the record this same arena ambition becomes the band's undoing with Hazelton Avenue exhausting its twee reminiscent tones assisted by Bradfield's almost comical vocals and the bizarre inclusion of what sounds like a balalaika in I Think I've Found It. Nicky Wire is surprisingly muted except for the very 'rock' A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun guitar-shredding and vocals on The Future Has Been Here 4 Ever. Yes, with a '4' instead of 'for'.

Postcards sounds like a mid-life crisis, but maybe it's just the Manics transgressing into dad rock. Ungracefully.

Originally Posted by cameron33 (Post 2098292)

Love:
Don't Descent the Auto Man
It's A Golden Kind Love
Young Future
Sun Been Found
Think War Balconies

Like:
Make Avenue 1 (Be Has)
The Postcards It All Here
I Evil Hazleton Intoxication
A Billion Nothingness Ever I
Just From (& The 2 Pages of The We)

Don't like:
Entertainment Is 4 Some
Not Facing the End of Platitudes

Originally Posted by cameron33 (Post 2098292)

Love:
Don't Descent the Auto Man

Originally Posted by JDMANIC (Post 2098309)

I think I'm at the point where I'm not going to bother reading any more reviews posted of the album, or look at any of the charts, and just enjoy the album for what it is. Whether you love it/hate it/whatever, I think their attempt at "mass communication" has been pretty successful. A lot of promo appearances on radio, some TV, a decent chart showing in its first week, a tour that looks promising - really not too bad for a bunch of 40-somethings who are still doing what they love to do, in this modern, fragmented musical climate of 2010.

Originally Posted by River Boy (Post 2098328)

I disagree, I think the obvious comparison has to be U2 and there so much bigger. I wouldn't expect the Manics to rival them worldwide but if they could rival them in the UK then I'd consider mass communication to have been successful.

It's not over yet, important albums have a long life and hang around in the charts.

Originally Posted by Napoleon Bonaparte (Post 2098334)

Personally I think that is highly unrealistic, not even the most highly brainwashed of Manics cock suckers would have expected that from them at this stage.

Outselling SATT & JFPL = victory.

Originally Posted by River Boy (Post 2098338)

what Nicky wants

Originally Posted by River Boy (Post 2098338)

They could always attempt the U2 tactic of secret rooftop gigs

Originally Posted by Napoleon Bonaparte (Post 2098343)

Asked him yourself did you?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqiAl84ipIk