Prozac and Whimsy

By the time Everything Must Go came around in 1996 I was fully in my teenage angst heavy metal phase. I liked my music loud. I liked my music fast. I liked my music angry. So when it was announced that Manic Street Preachers were coming back after a year and the loss of Richie I was frankly over the fucking moon because how else would you follow that loss and The Holy Bible with anything over than even more abject misery?

At the time I was not prepared or equipped to deal with Everything Must Go and the resulting global fame of *MY* band. It felt like a sell out in the worst way possible. It felt like a betrayal to Richie and everything that I thought he stood for. There was no way I could be seen liking an album THIS popular. An album that my dad liked? An album that Oasis fans liked? Nope. No way. Not now not ever.

It took me a very long time, like an embarrassingly long time, to realise just how fucking good an album it is. It the sound of a band, picking themselves up, dusting themselves off and carrying on in the face of everything. It is the sound of triumph and hope and love and everything that makes the world a beautiful place. But scratch the surface and there is sadness. There is misery but it’s not so overt and aggressive. It’s the sound of a wounded band healing.

They released four of the twelve tracks as singles (Japan got an extra single in the form of Further Away) but they could have released damn near every single track and they all would have charted. I’d go as far as saying that NOT releasing Enola/Alone was an act of self sabotage.

It’s such a beautiful perfect record and at times I feel like I have lost years shunning it but the hope that runs through it wasn’t what I wanted or needed back then. I needed anger and spite and self loathing. I love The Holy Bible and always, always, will, it has got me through some really bad times but Everything Must Go has a trumpet solo. It has a harp. It has strings. It has harmonies. It has little slightly maudlin slices of joy that you can sing along to and forget that everything is going to shit for a few minutes.

The Manics (as the worst people in the world call them) are one of my favourite bands ever. These three albums (again I can argue for four and Generation Terrorists) are all perfect and important in their own ways, The Holy Bible more than the others for me, but somehow I have never seen them live. Yet.

I know I have missed out seeing them at the perfect moment more than once – They played Hereford Leisure Centre for fucks sake – But it would still be something very special and a box ticked for me. So maybe next time?

And that little glimmer of defiant hope for what is to come is what Everything Must Go gives me. And right now that is what I need more than anything.