![]() ![]() That's who 'Orwellian' belongs to now, and the word is an immediate alarm bell. The latter are the charlatans and grifters - Laurence Fox, Katie Hopkins, Darren Grimes, Milo Yiannopoulos, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Paul Joseph Watson, Julie Burchill – whose modus operandi is to say something racist or transphobic that's more foghorn than dogwhistle to their thousands of grimy-palmed sockpuppet followers, which stirs up an inevitable counterreaction, then they squeal in a well-remunerated column in the Telegraph, Mail or Spectator, trailed on the front cover, that they've been 'cancelled' and that “you can't say anything theeese days”. In 2021, there are two types of people who describe things as 'Orwellian': those who have actually read and understood Orwell, and those who never have. “It can be weaponised by the left and the right”, James Dean Bradfield explained to Radio X, but in reality it's become overwhelmingly associated with the right. When the news broke that Manic Street Preachers were about to release a single called 'Orwellian', the heart sank. (An interviewer from Under The Radar recently put it to Wire that Lifeblood, Futurology and The Ultra Vivid Lament feel like a trilogy, an idea with which Wire agreed.) It moves in subtle shades, pastels rather than primaries, building its moods more delicately than the Route One surges and crescendos of Resistance. If it has a close relative in the band's back catalogue, it is 2004's underestimated, under-loved Lifeblood. Its pleasures are not obvious, slap-you-in-the-face ones. With the first few listens, the initial sense is that if it's not in their Top 5, then it's arguably Top Half. Exactly where The Ultra Vivid Lament, the fourteenth Manics album, ranks in their oeuvre will only really become clear when the dust has settled. Just when you're counting them out, they have repeatedly proven themselves capable of bouncing back fully recharged and within touching distance of the peak of their abilities. Resistance Is Futile was in the latter camp, so we were due another swing of the pendulum. ![]() So for example, Journal For Plague Lovers (2009) and Futurology (2014) were in the challenging tradition of their 1994 masterpiece The Holy Bible, while Postcards From A Young Man (2010) and Send Away The Tigers (2007) were more in the commercial vein of Everything Must Go (1996). For most of the 21st century, the band have alternated fairly regularly between arty, avant-garde adjacent albums and mainstream, radio-friendly ones. Where most bands would build cautiously on any ground gained, each record the trio releases is typically a reaction against the last. In order to fully understand any individual Manic Street Preachers album, it is usually necessary to understand all the others. Furthermore, if ever a band has thrived on sadness, it's Manic Street Preachers: since the disappearance of Richey Edwards in early 1995, it's been part of their DNA. A sense of freedom to fulfil projects placed on hold, and indeed the impetus to honour the dead by doing so. When a loved one passes away after a long illness, it can release a strangely liberating surge of adrenalin in the bereaved. Having lost both parents since Resistance, it would be understandable if Wire found himself creatively frozen. That they have managed to recover from this perilous situation with The Ultra Vivid Lament, and to do it in considerable style, is not entirely unpredictable if you know their history. Furthermore, the back-to-back twin albums Rewind The Film and Futurology in 2013-14 had sapped their juices to needle-in-the-red levels. Wire's parents were both dying of cancer during the run-up to its recording, and his head was understandably in no place for creativity. Musically, ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ is inspired by a formative years record box (ABBA, post-Eno Roxy, the Bunnymen, Fables-era REM, Lodger) though the end result could only be the unique union of James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore, collectively one of the UK’s most consistently brilliant rock’n’roll bands for over three decades.The reasons for that are various. It is both reflection and reaction a record that gazes in isolation across a cluttered room, fogged by often painful memories, to focus on an open window framing a gleaming vista of land melting into sea and endless sky. The Ultra Vivid Lament is the 14 th studio album from Manic Street Preachers. ![]()
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