Show me a wonder you can't be sure of

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

01/04/01 : Know Your Enemy - Manic Street Preachers

Our eighth visit with them Manics, which puts them level with Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift and Neil Young - which is pretty illustrious company. I quite liked them around this time, but not enough to buy this - I'm not sure I've ever heard it so it will be interesting to see what I think of it.

Hmmm. For the most part, I'd say it's a fine, if somewhat underwhelming Manics album - it feels like they've made an effort to be a bit rockier than their preceding (massively successful) albums. Which is fine if that's what they wanted to do but they need the tunes to back up such a move and nothing really jumped out at me (but conversely, nothing jumped out as dreadful either). The only tracks that did jump out were the ones where they've tried something completely different eg there was a disco number somewhere in the middle of it all which I certainly raised my eyebrows at! It's mostly what you'd expect though, but 69 minutes of it all was too much.

We're at #6 in the charts this week on their second week of a fourteen week run with it peaking at #2 in its debut week. The top five this week were Hear'Say (a new entry), Eva Cassidy, Gorillaz (another new entry), Dido and a Billy Joel best-of (starting a run of three weeks at #5) and the next highest new entry was Rod Stewart (#9 - at least we were spared that).

Wikipedia tells us this is their sixth album and explains that it was originally supposed to be two albums, to be released on the same day - except that the record label said "we don't think that's going to be happening", so it was put out as one big album. Amusingly, in 2015, James Dean Bradfield admitted that a lot of the album was a reaction to the huge success of their previous two albums, explaining his thought processes and concluding "What a fucking idiot I was". Critically, the reviews were somewhat mixed with most people seemed to see what they were trying to do without loving it - but Rolling Stone declared that "nowhere amidst all the confusion is there even a worthwhile tune to be salvaged". Ouch. Commercially, it didn't hit their previous highs, but still made the top twenty in most European countries.

discogs.com tells us this is a one pound album but if you want the 180 gm vinyl '22 reissue (as two separate albums as they originally envisaged) then it's going to set you back £95. Which seems quite a high price for musical integrity, but them Manics are pretty hot on the integrity thing - and I respect them for that, but they need some better tunes than they have here to keep me engaged.

08/04/01 - Not without merit, but...