Know *My* Enemy - some random thoughts on 'KYE'

[Phil C]

After a hard week, I find myself turning to the Manics' great folly, 'Know Your Enemy'. As I listen to it, I realise that in many ways it's *my* Manics album, in the way that people have *their* Doctor Who, or Sherlock Holmes, or Bowie period. It isn't the album that got me into them (that's 'Everything Must Go') nor my favourite (that's 'The Holy Bible'). It's the first album released (I think) after I got into their online fandom, the first time I went to see them on tour. But I think the connection is more with the album itself. It's messy. It's over-ambitious. It's angry. It tries to incorporate so many different kinds of sounds into one record that its inconsistency becomes its defining characteristic. From the thrash of 'Found That Soul' to the gospel of 'Let Robeson Sing', the Beach Boys pop of 'So Why So Sad' to the mirror-ball inviting 'Miss Europa Disco Dancer', it tries to do it all, unable to focus on just one thing, its attention constantly shifting to something else. It makes possibly unwise agitprop statements ('Freedom Of Speech Won't Feed My Children'), is at times politically naive ('Baby Elian'), and at others goes so far beyond its ability to say what it wants to that it speaks in tongues ('Intravenous Agnostic'). It has b-sides that should have made the album, and a lost track released years later that should have been its centre-piece, so I love it despite knowing that it should be better, despite its flaws. Even the artwork (by artist Neale Howells) says something to me - scrawl graffiti'd onto a gray wall, obscured by scratchings out and red paint dripping down, sometimes readable, sometimes not, like it almost knows what it wants to say and that it can't quite make itself understood, but feeling the need to try anyway and inevitably being only partly successful in its aims. To me, it's like a rough canvas bag that I can sling over my shoulder and take with me anywhere, confident that in its deceptive capaciousness I will always find the song I need.