Prozac and Whimsy

No band has had a three album run as good as Manic Street Preachers. You could possibly argue four but Generation Terrorists is over long, over blown and over produced and that is what makes it everything that it is and everything that it needed and promised to be.

It is always, always, worth remembering that Motorcycle Emptiness shone out like a fucking beacon amongst all the glam bravado bullshit. THAT is who this band could, should and would go on to be.

For me the real run starts a year later in 93 with Gold Against The Soul. From the opening of Sleepflower you know this is a different beast altogether. The swagger has all but gone. The anger and self loathing is starting to seep through and everything is lazer focused. There are still glimpses of the old brashness and as a result Drug Drug Druggy kind of sticks out like a sore thumb, even more so when it is nestled between Life Becoming A Landslide and Roses In The Hospital two slices of beautiful brilliance.

The Motorcycle Emptiness of this album is clearly La Tristesse Durera, it’s just on a different level to everything else, it’s the sound of a band starting  to become what they’ll go on to be even if they didn’t or couldn’t believe it at the time.

This is an album that I missed at the time with the band being on the peripheral of my tastes as I started to become what I’d go on to be myself but it is one that I have fallen in love with over the years. It’s a beautiful record that gets under your skin and you find yourself losing yourself in it playing it on a loop for hours on end.

I’m at the point in whatever this depressive episode is where I just can’t sleep enough. I’ll nod off on the sofa with little to no notice, I’ll wake up hours later still tired.  I wake up in the mornings after long dreamless sleeps, still tired.

I’m just so, so, very tired but albums like this and songs like Sleepflower and Roses In The Hospital make everything feel OK.

Writing “Forever Delayed” in the condensation on the shower screen might not mean much of anything but it feels like it helps and I guess that’s enough sometimes isn’t it?