I was right all along in declaring Lifeblood a masterpiece. In 2004, on first listen, I think I tentatively said it was in my top three Manic Street Preachers albums, next to 1994's The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go from 1996. There's no reassessement needed now on my part as I've always loved the record, no matter what the band said then, or some fans, or lots of critics.
Of course, my circumstances at the time may have slightly influenced my rating of the album, given that I was inbetween jobs, and sinking into depression; the plaintive "I Live to Fall Asleep" cut a little close given that I spent all day sleeping after watching TV and scouring classifieds all night. Similarly, "Solitude Sometimes Is" was heard as an almost anthem for withdrawal in these ears. I held my import CD close, played it almost daily, and then found a job and put it away lest I dilute its strange emotional power.
Heard now, in a new deluxe remastered edition, Lifeblood still seems the band rounding a corner stylistically, and charting a path as distinctive as those carved out on The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go, their first post-Richey record. These songs positively glisten with promise even 20 years on. While "The Love of Richard Nixon" still ranks as a defiantly odd and obstinately out-of-touch single option, "Empty Souls" soars atop a piano-line every bit as ecstatic as, say, the string break in "Australia". Elsewhere, "Emily", an ode to Emmeline Pankhurst -- the Manics never stop teaching -- offers up one of James Dean Bradfield's best vocal performances on a record full of them. Similarly, "Glasnost" blooms atop a busy guitar hook and lyrics that (again) really hit me hard: "When did life get so complicated?"
So much of the success of these numbers is thanks to producer Greg Haver who found a way to unclutter the band's post-Know Your Enemy sonic attack, and simplify things. From the faux-soul of "Always/Never" with its slap-bass from Nicky Wire and Sean Moore's sample-worthy drum hits, and on to the layered "A Song for Departure", Haver's knack for finding the formula for each individual song still sounds assured two decades on. I think Haver deserves credit for the overall vibe of the record, though Tony Visconti produced three songs here: "Emily", "Solitude Sometimes Is", and "Cardiff Afterlife", the elegiac, Bernard Herrmann-inspired closer. That one, with its harp glissandos right out of the Taxi Driver soundtrack it seemed, was such a marvelous tune that I was surprised in 2004 that more weren't rushing to buy this record. How could fans turn on a trio sharing their hearts like this? If Know Your Enemy found the Manics trying to sound like 10 other bands, Lifeblood was the Manic Street Preachers reclaiming their own history and stepping deftly into a new style.
There are so many bonus cuts here in the 3-CD version that I don't know where to begin. Steven Wilson's epic remix of "1985" is borderline hypnotic, though Gwenno's remix more perfectly captures for me the sound of the year in question. The alternate version of the tune finds James Dean Bradfield making the melody more urgent. Elsewhere, B-sides like "Everything Will Be" and "No Jubilees" further the mood of Lifeblood, though less successfully. The Richey-sampling "Askew Road" holds up fairly well, as do the bouncy "Voodoo Polaroids" and the rockier "Quarantine (In My Place Of)". The Nicky Wire-sung "Dying Breeds" foreshadows -- as someone else already wrote somewhere -- Nicky's 2023 solo record, while "Failure Bound" feels in keeping with the downbeat mood of a few of the flip-sides here. Still, "The Soulmates" is a revelation. A catchy gem, with a superb guitar solo from James, this one earns a spot as one of the band's better numbers from the era.
Of the many demos here, "To Repel Ghosts" is the standout, revealing hints of the path the band would pursue a decade later on Futurology. And a whole host of live cuts from a BBC performance show the strength of this material in the 2004-2005 time-frame. I was pleasantly surprised to hear "I Live to Fall Asleep" rendered so wonderfully in a live setting, given the backing vocals and production on the record making that a challenge. That one, and "Fragments" work surprisingly well in concert, with the latter sounding nearly like a cousin to "Die in the Summertime" from The Holy Bible a decade earlier. The demos and live cuts on this deluxe edition of Lifeblood offer proof that the band had a grip on the material. This album wasn't, as some critics implied, some weird outlying mistake in their discography. Had the label allowed more than two singles, who knows what would have happened?
Lifeblood has never sounded better, of course, nor been better placed within the context of the band's output (admittedly easier to do now than in 2004). The Manic Street Preachers made a sleek, heartfelt record here, one which drew from white boy soul and New Wave to frame tunes as concise and effective as any the Welsh trio had ever written to date. There's an economy here that remains impressive, especially so given the big emotional swings across the span of the album proper. The supplemental materials provide further evidence at the largeness of the vision of Lifeblood. Given that I've loved it since first listen two decades ago, I feel vindicated now that its greatness is on full display.
The 20th anniversary edition of Lifeblood can be ordered in a variety of formats via the official Manic Street Preachers website.
[Photo: Mitch Ikeda]