Manic Street Preachers Know Your Enemy (Epic) *** £14.99
The real clue to What the Manics Did Next had nothing to do with launching their sixth album in Cuba, nor their much-hyped return to a revolutionary punk-rock agenda. Nope, the real clue was tucked away on the B-side of last year's limited-edition, back-to-basics, number one single Masses Against the Classes, where James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore treated the fans to an exuberant cover of Chuck Berry's Rock and Roll Music. It was an enthusiastically pointless pub-rock joy, and sounded like a band desperately trying to shake off their increasingly humourless, flabby-arsed, Brit-friendly AOR, even if it meant being retro and corny. And so it proves from the outset of Know Your Enemy, as Bradfield recklessly unleashes a bunch of old Johnny Thunders geetar licks on Found that Soul, followed by Ocean Spray, a clean, sweet, acoustic stroll reminiscing on the death of Bradfield's mother. Those who only check in for the band's post-Richey angst-with-orchestras might like to leave about now.
Because Know Your Enemy, produced with an ear for invention, spontaneity and grungy din by Dave Eringa, Mike Hedges and David Holmes, is all over the place and so blatantly derivative of so many bands that it occasionally resembles one of those old Top of the Pops compilations. Indeed, the album features your fave Welsh rockers performing in the style of the Beach Boys (So Why So Sad), Sonic Youth (Intravenous Agnostic), Joy Division (Dead Martyrs), New Order (Baby Elian), Jesus and Mary Chain (the coda of My Guernica) and, on The Year of Purification and His Last Painting, good old REM - which might surprise those who remember Wire's "I hope Michael Stipe gets Aids" pronouncement onstage at the Kilburn National a few years ago. Unoriginal? Well, yes. But it does make Know Your Enemy more fun to listen to than anything since their Generation Terrorists debut.
This scattershot approach has its shortcomings, though. Wattsville Blues features Wire's first lead vocals on a Manics LP. Pitched entirely on one note, he manages to make Mark E Smith sound like Mariah Carey. This lurching, sweary, sneery thing tries, and fails, to be very New York, 1976. Which, in a very different way, is what the next track would like to sound like too. Miss Europa Disco Dancer is their much-discussed first stab at disco, featuring Wire and drummer Moore struggling miserably to master the rudiments of a basic disco beat. By the time Wire starts chanting "Braindead motherfuckers" repeatedly to fade, your smile has congealed into an embarrassed wince.
Of course, their being the Manics, it's not all Studio 54 and glittery slingbacks. The preacher part of the name is more appropriate here than at any time since the early days. Sadly, Wire continues to be lousy at it. The Small Faces-esque Let Robeson Sing pays tribute to the great Afro-American baritone and left-wing activist Paul Robeson, with Wire (via Bradfield's tonsils) asking: "Can anyone make a difference any more?/ Can anyone write a protest song?" Well, yes, probably. Tell you what - why don't you get on and give it a try? What is this, Who Wants To Be a Guilt-Ridden Millionaire? Elsewhere, and in keeping with the central theme of "America - Crap or What?", Baby Elian bigs up Cuba and informs us that "You don't sit in a rocking chair/ When you build a revolution" - which perhaps explains why Val Doonican never worked with Public Enemy.
So ignore the words, because My Guernica, His Last Painting and The Convalescent are magnificently dark, marching and charging post-punk anthems. Freedom of Speech Won't Feed My Children, apart from possessing the definitive Manics song title, is swaggering, driving drone-rock that sums up everything great about this band. Furious, unreasonable (the Dalai Lama and the US celebs who support him come in for serious stick), confusing (freedom of speech "just brings heart disease", apparently) and cantankerously dumb, it reminds you that the Manics are, essentially, all the misguided and muddled bits of the Clash without a London Calling or White Riot to make it all right. Which, in a world of Coldplays and David Grays, remains surprisingly lovable.
Nevertheless, this record is the most directionless and baffling Manics album thus far. It's tempting to conclude that its true nature will only be revealed in the fullness of time. But I suspect that Know Your Enemy will remain what it is - a well-meaning and charismatic mess, much like the band who made it.
