Album Review: Journal For Plague Lovers by the Manic Street Preachers

When I was in my senior year of high school, one of my favorite things to do after school was to take the bus to Tower Records and go shopping for new music. As I've said before, I loved Tower because, although it was a chain, it was one of those places where music fans congregated to judge each other. There was always a sense of hostility in the air, and a constant feeling that you had to be ready to defend your purchases, but that was what I loved about it. It was a place where you could debate and hear different perspectives, even if they were expressed rudely.


One of my most memorable experiences there happened when I bought The Holy Bible by the Manic Street Preachers. First of all, its album art is very... interesting, so I was a little nervous about showing it to the guy at the counter. When he picked it up to scan it he took a good long look at it, and all he said was "I liked the book better."

Ever since then, I have loved that album. It's one of my favorites of all time, not only because the songs are incredible, but also because it has one of the most interesting back-stories of any album ever. MSP consisted of four musicians, one of whom, a guitarist, was named Richey Edwards. Richey always displayed signs of mental instability, such as when he mutilated his arm during an interview. His grand philosophy involved making a spectacularly good album and following it with a spectacularly good tour, and then disappearing from the public eye forever.

The band released two albums and an EP before working on The Holy Bible. At that time, Richey suffered from severe anorexia and depression and was confined to a mental hospital, where he wrote most of the lyrics for the album. Because of this, The Holy Bible is what I like to call an unintentional concept album; it was a window into the mind of Richey. The album received enourmous praise from critics who were also terrified of it, and Richey came with the band on tour. Towards the end of the tour, Richey checked out of his hotel and was never seen again.

The Holy Bible is, to put it lightly, a deeply disturbing album. But you can't tell that if you just listen to it passively. The band's lead singer, James Dean Bradfield, wrote all of the music, which is much more pop-friendly than the lyrics. (I also think that the songwriting process of this album was really cool, since it was the opposite of what most bands do - the guitarist wrote the lyrics and the singer wrote the music.) The Holy Bible is one of those albums that sneaks up on you. The first time you listen to it, you'll probably think "this is a nice album." The second time, certain lyrics such as "I don't know what I'm scared of, or what I even enjoy," "I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view," and "I am an architect, they call me a butcher" will jump out at you, and by the third time you listen to the album you will be petrified with fear and depression. The Holy Bible is like a good Hitchcock movie; it scares you, but you still appreciate it and enjoy it.

Anyway, after that album the band acquired a poppier sound and a more positive outlook and released Everything Must Go, a solid but fairly straightforward album. Since then most of their material has been pretty boring, but they just released a new album called Journal for Plague Lovers that was hyped up to be the next Holy Bible, complete with lost Richey lyrics.

One look at the album cover and it's obvious that this album was at least an attempt to re-create The Holy Bible. The album cover's font is even the same. But did this album succeed at re-creating The Holy Bible? That's what I aim to answer in this album review.

Let's look at the first song on the album, "Peeled Apples." The first thing you'll notice (if you're familiar with The Holy Bible) is that the opening bassline is insanely reminiscent of the opening bassline to "Archives of Pain." We're only 5 seconds into the album and it already sounds similar to The Holy Bible. To answer whether or not this is a "classic" MSP song, let's look at the following checklist:

Does the song have a jagged-yet-hooky guitar riff?      Check

Is the production minimal?     Check

Reference to Noam Chomsky?    Check

So far, this looks like a solid MSP album.

On to the next song. This one is immediately noticeably different from "Peeled Apples." Namely, it's obviously supposed to be the really poppy single. But what's that lyric? Something about a married man fucking a Catholic? Yeah, this is definitely still Holy Bible-style Manics.

As for the rest of the album, the one thing I will say in it's favor is that it has WAY more variety than The Holy Bible. Probably the biggest complaint I've heard about that album is that it gets really, really samey and kinda boring towards the end. I don't think that can be said as much about Journal. "This Joke Sport Severed," with it's strummed acoustic guitar and string arrangements, sounds like stuff from Everything Must Go, while "Marlon JD," with it's electronic drums, doesn't even sound like any Manics song I've ever heard before. Basically, you won't get bored while listening to this album.

I do have one minor complaint, though, and I'll phrase it as a question: where are all the quotes? On The Holy Bible almost every song either started or ended with a quote that had something to do with the song's lyrical content. For example, "Yes," a song about prostitution, opened with a quote from a documentary about prostitiution; likewise, "4st7lb," which was about anorexia, had a quote from an anorexic person, "If White America Told The Truth..." had a quote about Ronald Reagen, and "Faster," which was probably the climax and the most nihilistic song of the album, had an insanely memorable quote from 1984. But there are no quotes to be found on Journal! What happened? Sure, the quotes on The Holy Bible were a little pretentious and gimmicky, but they really tied together all the songs on the album and made it more cohesive. Still, that's just a minor complaint.

I think what you can gather from the last two paragraphs is that while The Holy Bible was meant to be a grand statement taken as a whole, Journal For Plague Lovers is more like a simple collection of songs. Which isn't a bad thing. If anything, it makes the album a little more unpredictable and exciting. And believe me, all that nihilism and despair from The Holy Bible is still there. Journal For Plague Lovers was meant to be the spiritual successor to The Holy Bible, and that's definitely what it is. While it isn't The Holy Bible, it sounds more like that album than any other Manics album. It is easily my second favorite Manics album. So if you prefer the scary depressing Manics to the happy pop-friendly Manics, you'll definitely like their new album.