Customer Reviews

Gold Against the Soul

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It really gets to me when people whine about this album. If any of you could produce something this good then I wish you'd get on with it because you're guarenteed a buyer. This was the first manics album I purchased and I love it to THIS day. Sleepflower, Yourself, Life Becoming a landslide, Nostalgic Pushead... It's a breath of fresh air before the self destruction of The Holy Bible and after the political genius of Generation Terrorists. No it isn't the most immediate of albums, and no it doesn't carry as clear a message as The Holy Bible, but musically it is as good and worth the same amount of credit. Yes the Manics admit it is their weakest album, but that is what Radiohead said about Pablo Honey and readers of a high profile British music Mag have just rated it Number seven, just below the White Album. If you don't like this album then fair enough but if you discredit it just because it isn't as popular then the others then you have done the Manics and yourself a great disfavour.

I don't agree with the people who say that it's the Manic Street Preachers' "polished album" or "American album" whatsoever. I've never heard an American band as good as the Manics- The combination of the potent singer, superb guitarist & one hell of a melodicist James Dean Bradfield is; The powerful drumming, occasional trumpet & the cowriting of the music provided by Sean Moore; But overall the intense lyrics you just can't stay oblivious to written by the now departed Richey James & Nicky Wire are just some things no American band I've heard of has ever managed to combine. No American band would ever mean as much as the Manics mean to me & so the comment referred to above is just irrelevant. I agree that this is the Manics' second weakest album (Know Your Enemy is their really weakest album for me) but even @ their worse the Manics are still the best & Gold Against The Soul still has its share of unsurpassable songs such as "Sleepflower", "Yourself", "Life Becoming A Landslide" & "Symphony Of Tourette", all lyrically intriguing & (For the most part) well written songs. Of course there are some problematic songs such as "Nostalgic Pushead" & the titletrack which could've been magnificent songs if only they had a musical skeleton as strong as their lyrics. Just think of this album as Bsides material or something & you should be fine. So all in all- Not their best but still worth it for the few songs I've mentioned (Even though "La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)" is considered a classic aswell as a fan favourite my personal favourite on this album is "Life Becoming A Landslide" but that's only me so don't let me spoil it for ya hey?).

Not since Billy Idol's early 80s heyday has there been a group of nastier-looking punks making such radio-friendly music.

For all their snarling lips and spiked hair, on Gold Against the Soul, the Manic Street Preachers wanted a hit and wanted it bad. In North America, "Scream to a Sigh", a formula pop song of the highest order, almost did it for them.

Same can be said of "From Despair to Where", which lets the world finally find out what a Styx with talent might have sounded like. And I mean that in a good way...

Lyricists Nicky Wire and Richy James' topics range from depression to, well, depression, offering personal takes on suicide, sickness, separation, drugs, politics and, yes, even Tourette's Syndrome. Surprisingly, the heavy subjects don't come off as heavy-handed, thanks to the upbeat music of Sean Moore and James Bradfield.

Not as strong a CD as the biting The Holy Bible, but an admirable step toward it. Ignore the haircuts, enjoy the music.

This is fun. It really is. Easily the Manics' most--dare I say it?--pop-oriented album, but since when was catchiness a bad thing? I really can't stand elitism of that nature. Of course, that's not to say that the album is entirely good, even as far as it goes: it has a tendency to become just loud and annoying at times. Drug Drug Druggy, Roses in the Hospital (great title on that one, though), Sleepflower, the title track--they all feel like they're about to develop into something really great, but then they never do. They're not bad; they're just kind of...there.

On the other hand! We have Life Becoming a Landslide, which has a great groove and really shows what they were trying to do with the whole album. We have Nostalgic Pushead, which works thanks to the indelible chorus. We have Yourself, which is hard and loud in a good way. And of course, we have We have La Tristesse Durera, which is just plain fantastic.

So what are you going to do? Probably not the best choice for your first Manics album, but let's face it: once you're a fan, you're going to buy it, and that's that. Come for the highly comical liner picture of James Dean Bradfield screaming into the microphone (maybe his legs are on fire?); stay for the quality tunes.

After hearing "Everything Must Go" and "This is My Truth...", it is hard to believe that this is how the Manics started out. Like "Generation Terrorists", it is more above average punk rock than anything. The lyrics by Nicky Wire and Richey James are brilliant, while James Dean Bradfield turns in some manacing vocals. Not the best Manics album (if I had to rate them all, I would say that this is their weakest album), but a great one all the same.

On their second effort, the Manics went for a more mainstream AOR approach than the heavy hair metal of their debut record Generation Terrorists. There's significant on all levels. The essemble playing's much improved and tighter with occasional nods to funk. The songs are fleshed out with better riffs and varied parts including the occasional string arrangements. Finally, the lyrics have gone from political sloganeering to the personal, painting a stark depression. Many of the lines are simply stunning. In fact, among their five current albums, this is second to The Holy Bible in overall lyrics.

So why is this album then stunningly weaker than their debut? Well, ironically their musical improvements has turned them here into Queen (James Dean Bradfield's voice remarkable sounds like Freddie Mercury here.) Full of arena rock cliches (overdone solos, synths, cheesy shout-along choruses) which simply undoes the lyrics. Often, it simply sounds like the singer and music is completely oblivious to the lyrics. Moreover, the production is polished to the point of being sterile, while the playing is accomplished yet bloodless. Gold Against the Soul entirely misses the youthful exhuberance and self-belief of their debut.

That said, there are a few strong rockers here, namely Sleepflower and From Despair to Where and great sing-alongs like Roses in the Hospital and Drug Drug Druggy. Most of it sounds great in the car, and fans of 80s hard rock (like myself) will eat this up anyway. Overall, it is an enjoyable listen; but, given the promise of the album, it falls short by a mile.

Much of the problem with Gold Against the Soul lies in that the Manics really wanted to make a very commercial record. On live bootlegs, the Manics turn these same flatulent songs into lean punk with the sort of attitude and fire they missed on record. Same goes with the Generation Terrorists. It wasn't until their next album, "The Holy Bible", did they finally make music worthy of their lyrics and reputation.

I really enjoyed listening to this album. Musically I don't think this is the best album the Manics have released, but still there are great songs like "Life Becoming A Landslide", "From Despair To Where" and "La Tristesse Durera" which are uniqe both lyrically and musically. The lyrics on the album show a band, which is influenced by society (esp.where they come from) and has got their own ideas! MANIC STREET PREACHERS sure know how to use their minds!!!

The hype for the first and third albums overshadowed Gold Against The Soul. The Manics themselves criticized it shortly after it came out, and refused to play most of the songs on it for years. But I think it's held up very well, and (sacrilege!) in a way I even like it more than The Holy Bible. Underneath that loud pop-metal production, the songs can be just as poignant and eloquent. "La Tristesse Durera" is an upbeat, Madchester-inspired hit single where the lyrics express the sorrow and loneliness of a war veteran who has outlived his time. You have to make concessions to rock-and-roll theatrics -- an actual despondent veteran probably would not know what to make of this song. But the lines, "I sold my medal, it paid a bill / it sells at market stalls, parades Milan catwalks" are still evocative poetry unmatched in rock music, and if Bradfield undersells their despair, at least he's got the rage, veritably flinging the "sigh" into the audience's collective face.

At its best, Gold Against The Soul amps up the rage while going deeper into the debut's slogan-like expressions of alienation. "Deeper" is in a purely poetic sense, with more sophisticated wordplay and imagery: "fragments crawling like cobwebs on stone," "morning always seems too stale to justify / lamented hours, blossoms, minutes of our lives." Those phrases are all from "Sleepflower," which wasn't even a single, but also boasts what surely must be one of their five best riffs. When the lyrics aren't great, the music steps up. It's probably best _not_ to quote "Symphony Of Tourette," but the rhythmic arrangement of the bridge is intense and anthemic (plus the incoherent wail: "Stutter! Stutter!"), and honestly a lot better than the subsequent chorus.

They take a few pot-shots at the easy target of consumerism. "Yourself," I never liked that much. It's supposed to be an attack on Meaningless Bourgeois Routine ("you go on day after day, speak to your despised, and blanking your loved ones"), I guess. It has a couple of drawbacks: first, it is written in generalities, whereas songs like Blur's "Chemical World" or "Stereotypes" at least take care to add a few believable-sounding specifics about Ordinary Life. Second, the chorus of "Yourself" consists of repeating the word "yourself" a number of times. Still, not all of these efforts are wasted. "Nostalgic Pushead" somehow manages to work up such frothing anger at the commercialization of rock culture that it sort of transcends the mediocrity of the target, hitting the red at the cacophonous, distorted scream, "rebellion, it always sells at a profit."

And the targets are not all easy. "Gold Against The Soul" is a knowing, clearly expressed attack on the European "neo-liberal" consensus, cutting at greedy politicians ("shareholding a piece of this <...> country"), their hypocritical court poets and intellectuals ("white liberal hates slavery / needs Thai labour to clean his home"), and the generic platitudes in public discourse that block out philosophical and intellectual rigour ("working class cliches start here / either cloth caps or smack victims"). And there's still room for high poetic expression: "Tragedy is not known under this dimmest of lights." Rock music generally struggles with "relevance," mostly because it works very hard to find something irrelevant to get self-righteous about. This one moment is the proof that the Manics, in those heedless early days, were special. The only other time they were ever this incisive was on "Freedom Of Speech Won't Feed My Children," buried at the end of their unsuccessful 2001 album Know Your Enemy.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are Richey Edwards' increasingly self-directed, solitary monologues. Excepting "Sleepflower," these are less accomplished than "Yes" or "4st 7lb" from The Holy Bible. Fortunately, Bradfield saves the day, so that "Drug Drug Druggy" (that's also the chorus) sports a blistering funk-metal Frusciante solo. The reverse also happens -- the bucolic moderate-rock licks in "From Despair To Where" (though they do set the strings/rock blueprint the Manics use to this day) even almost mask Richey's declaration, "The weak kick like straw / till the world means less and less / words are never enough, just cheap tarnished glitter."

Listening to this strong, vital album now feels strange. I like the non-Richey albums well enough, and Gold Against The Soul is widely held to be the weakest of the Richey albums, but still, after e.g. Postcards From A Young Man, this is like being suddenly kicked after a long sleep. A lot of things seemed possible, a long time ago.

I would have given this four stars but I hope my five drags this out of the 3.5 level. I like this album and offer this personal review.

This is not the best Manics album, it is however the one album from their back catalogue that I can listen to why is this...

well, Generation Terrorists is raw and Motorcycle Emptiness apart often too aggressive for passive listening.

Holy bible is far too painfull, this is beauty but in a way its like when you were dumped by your first girlfriend, the pictures of you as a couple are like knives through your corneas.

I overplayed Everything must go and TIMTTMY, and it will be years before I can buzz to it.

Gold is musically very good, Sleepflower is impressive, Life becoming a landslide has major hooks, La Tristesta Deurera, is another impressively produced rock song, however my favourite starts with "...I write this alone in my bed, I poisoned every room in the house..." odd how such obvious words sum up those blue times, sometimes you walk around and just don't what room to walk into, what room you want to go to, or where you will be next. You realise the poverty of your thoughts, but just don't know how to put them right....

This album does not have the pure pain of the Holy bible, but in this it sums up the angst of the modern life, not depression, just angst... in fact the movement from this second album to the Holy bible is a saluatory warning that unchecked simple rage against perceived injustice to you can become self harm.

Suicide is not painless.

The Manics' second album is always the "forgotten one". However, I think it's actually better than their debut, where every track tended to sound the same after while (and it's a looooooooooooong album!). Gold Against the Soul is tighter, harder, and overall, more enjoyable. It also contains some great songs: Sleepflower is one of their best ever, and Tristesse Durrera, Nostalgic Pushead, Drug Drug Druggy, Roses in the Hospital, and From Despair to Where are great songs. Check this one out.