Album 15

[Marconi Delorian]

Originally Posted by savemejebus

While it may be an exaggeration to say 15+ years, as I love most of RTF and portions of Futurology, and have enjoyed some of the recent B-Sides, it is very fair to say that I've been very critical of the last two albums and of what I've heard from this one.

To answer your questions, yes I think it's worthwhile. Opposing voices are always worthwhile as long as they're not raised just for the sake of contrarian. I think it's especially important in Manics fandom as so many Manics fans are the die hard type that will just say whatever they've put out is good, and be grateful to get something and sing their praises regardless.

I've done it myself. I remember my mate complaining about 'Show me the Wonder' being a bit weak as a single and I said 'ah yeah, but you need to see it with the video to get the real impact' and then he turned to me like I had 2 heads and said 'dude, it's a fucking song from an album, not a multimedia project, it shouldn't need a video for someone to 'get it' (and it shouldn't sound like the theme tune off neighbours either)'. He was dead right, it's a weak single but my automatic response was to defend my favourite band.

Manics fans defend and defend and defend. Look at the people on here wondering why folk were annoyed at James, the singer in a supposedly politically aware band not voting on something that directly affected him, making light of it and wondering why we'd hold him up to the standards his band led us to expect.

I've been listening to the Manics since I first saw them live at 15 years old. They've been my favourite band since I was 18. I'm 47 now so that's 32 years, a significant portion of my life. Maybe I hold them to too high a standard but I really believe that anyone who has seen them play live knows that they are capable of much more than their last two albums show.

I've literally only seen negative posts under your name (tbf I have only noticed recently, but had a quick look at some older posts to see how long you've been around). I'm glad you enjoyed some songs from 2013/14 and to be fair, they've not been that productive since so it is only 2 albums since then.

But I'm not a 'stan' or whatever - if I don't like a song, I don't convince myself to like it just because it's from them. I loved International Blue and felt RIF to be a let down - bottom 3 in the rankings for me, above SATT and Postcards, though I do enjoy a few of the album tracks now and again. I genuinely enjoyed TUVL, to my surprise - i thought the Abba pianos and fairground ride soundtracks would kill it off, but no. You'll see if you scroll back a bit that I called JDB fucking stupid for his Brexit non vote, so I am not coming at you as a blind faithful. Healthy criticism is good, but sometimes it feels like yours is more despairing and eye rolling - not sure if Dancing Kirby is still here, but they would often temper their (sometimes withering!) disdain with humour, which definitely seemed a lot healthier - if I didn't agree with them, I could at least enjoy a good ol' pisstake.

So I hope there are some songs on the new album that appeal to you. Perhaps I'm also cutting them some slack because I loved the KYE re-tool and Lifeblood anniversary, but I'll be optimistic until I play the whole of the new album through a few times.