So if I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

21/03/99 : This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours - Manic Street Preachers

Another one I owned (19/41 - we've hit a bit of a purple patch here) and I remember liking it, but can't say I've listened to it in a very long time, so it will be interesting to see what it sounds like after all these years.

Hmmm - it's an interesting one.  In that it wasn't as interesting as I was expecting.  The good bits are good - "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next", "You Stole the Sun from My Heart", "Tsunami" and "Black Dog On My Shoulder" (snappy song titles, guys!) are all decent enough tracks, but the rest of them just slide right by.  They make nice enough sounds but there's not really an awful lot to them - maybe if I spent more time getting back into it then it would all slot into place, but that's not gonna happen.  

We're at #7 in the charts this week on their 27th week of a 62 week run, with it having spent its three weeks at #1.  The top five this week were Blur (a new entry), Stereophonics, The Corrs, Robbie Williams and Britney Spears and the next highest new entry is Beth Orton's Central Reservation (#17) which is a very fine album indeed.

Wikipedia has more than I was expecting on the album (161 milliPeppers) but there's very little content in there.  The title of the album comes from a speech by Aneurin Bevan, it's their first album without any input from Richey Edwards and - well, that's about it.  The critics were mostly nice enough about it, but there is a definite whiff of "they're selling out" to some of the comments - whatever the sniffy critics thought, it won the Brit Award for Best British Album (and the band won Best British Group).  The public certainly didn't care either with it doing well across Europe, getting to #1 in Ireland, Sweden and Finland as well as here - it didn't do anything in the US, but still managed to sell five million copies globally.

"Customers also listened to" Suede, Starsailor, Embrace and Ash - I suspect the Manics will be more happy to be associated with some of them than others.  I didn't hate this album but I was expecting a bit more - I'll be interested to revisit Everything Must Go when I get my chance to see if that's also still as enjoyable as I remember it being.

28/03/99 - A bit of a disappointment
14/03/99 - A terrible album without any terrible tracks

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