It still seems like their most problematic record, discounting the metal on Gold Against the Soul as a youthful mistake. Know Your Enemy from 2001 found the Manic Street Preachers attempting to punk up the sound they'd ridden to considerable post-Richey success with 1996's Everything Must Go and 1998's This is My Truth Tell Me Yours. However, the ambitions of Know Your Enemy (2001) were never allowed to reach their fruition, thanks to label restrictions on what was released then. Now, with a deluxe and expanded edition of the record, the band's getting their wish.
Following the original intention of releasing two simultaneous records, the Manics serve up Know Your Enemy in 2022 as two discs, Door to the River and Solidarity, as was the original plan two decades ago. That this largely works, isn't a big surprise, but how it works is. Listening to this now causes a reappraisal from even the most jaded of fan. What could have been a cash-grab reissue, is a considered, smart reshaping of a piece of work that here and now yields angles and directions never imagined by the trio in 2001. The selections here, when combined with B-sides, remixes, and demos, add to up one of the group's most consistently invigorating works in ages. In 2001, the Preachers rewrote their style, and in 2022, they're reworking our understanding of an album that lots of us, even real fans, don't really play that much anymore. Well, you're going to want to play this one.
The Door to the River disc opens with "The Year of Purification", a track that I skipped a bunch on the old Know Your Enemy, but which seems a vital tone-setter here. With a remix of "So Why So Sad" taking the place of the original, and B-sides "Rosebud" and "Just a Kid" occupying prime real estate here, the album has a tone that's more hermetic than the original Side 1/first half of Know Your Enemy. Single "Let Robeson Sing", sandwiched between the moody "His Last Painting" and the introspective flip of "Groundhog Days", shines even brighter now. On the whole, Door to the River is of a piece with the mood found on later Manics tracks like "Indian Summer", with the band sounding like they are pleasing themselves without worrying too much about having another number 1. The songs are nimble, not dour, with the sharp edges of of the band's attack left for disc two.
Solidarity opens with the odd, spiky "Intravenous Agnostic", a cut that's always seemed like a holdover from Gold Against the Soul. What follows are the best, louder tunes from the era, with even "The Masses Against the Classes", the surprise one-off single, taking a prime slot here. The McCarthy cover of "We Are All Bourgeois Now" sits nicely next to the wicked "Freedom of Speech Won't Feed My Children", one of the group's most direct and effective rockers, while "The Convalaescent" nearly soars thanks to a cleaner mix here. The brutalisms of "Dead Martyrs" and "Found That Soul" sit closer together now, making Solidarity on its own nearly better than the original Know Your Enemy as far as this long-time fan is concerned. Things wind down on disc two with "Wattsville Blues", a Nicky Wire-sung number, and the cod-Europop of "Miss Europa Disco Dancer", a number as pointed and biting as any of the more angular numbers that precede it here.
Know Your Enemy in 2022 is a marked improvement on the original. The chaos of the single disc now given shape and meaning by the two-disc grouping. With a generous selection of B-sides, and rarities, like the glorious "Fear of Motion", we can hear Manic Street Preachers go in about a dozen different directions at once, pulling in a whole host of influences to create something that also blends the vibe from their prior five albums. A rejection of what brought them success with This is My Truth Tell Me Yours, Know Your Enemy still stands as a uniquely iconoclastic release, one which summarizes the trio's loves and hates, while foreshadowing avenues that were pursued later on records like 2007's Send Away the Tigers and 2014's Futurology. As a fan, Know Your Enemy was never my favorite Manics long-player, and it remained the sort of thing where I routinely skipped certain tracks when I played it. However, this new edition is so stunning, so revelatory that I'm forced to reassess my original reaction to many of these numbers, and concede that when allowed to place things together as they always wanted them placed, the Manic Street Preachers in 2001 were offering up something great that was stifled by label interference and a hesitant market-place.
Know Your Enemy is out again in a two-disc edition, a three-disc edition, and in a multitude of formats and streaming options.
The band's touring the United States with Suede. More details via ManicStreetPreachers.com.
[Photo: Mitch Ikeda]