I've recently come to the conclusion that I'll never actually get into this album. It's been ten years of periodically trying, only each time to give up once again. The following will probably be some of the least positive things I'll ever write on here about the Manic Street Preachers. I'm sorry; I do love them, but just not on this record.
To cut straight to the point, Journal for Plague Lovers sounds to me like an album of demos that were never fully realised. There are two tracks on the record that I hear and think "this is a song" - the title track and William's Last Words - the rest are underwhelming. Some have a riff or a chorus that works, but that's it and it's not enough to carry the song. More than half of the songs are under three minutes in length, which is very short for a band who have written some of the best six-minute songs ever (Motorcycle Emptiness, The Everlasting) and do incredible things when at their fullest sounding as a band. The demos they've been so good at providing with each recent album are fascinating, but rarely ever a patch on the final product. I wonder if there was more depth and potential to these songs that for whatever reason they just never extracted?
The album had three particularly interesting features - it was written entirely using Richey's lyrics that he gave to Nicky before he disappeared; it was produced by Steve Albini - not a producer you'd immediately think of the Manics to go to; and they promised there would be no singles. Each of those deserves a little dwelling on.
Was the Manics using Richey's old lyrics a cheap attempt to reignite some old passion? I don't think so (but that's partly because I can't see that passion here), and I wouldn't like to say such a thing. It certainly threw more red flags for me than it did get me excited. I don't think the magic in the first three (and a half) albums was Richey's lyrics in isolation - I think the partnership between him and Nicky can't be ignored, not to mention that I suspect there was more to the process than lyrics-to-song without a bit of back and forth. A lot of these songs struggle to fit around the lyrics, making me think that the lyrics must have usually adapted to fit the songs more. The revival of the backwards R's and the use of more of Jenny Saville's artwork did, however, seem like a cheap way to make people draw comparisons to The Holy Bible though.
Steve Albini is an interesting choice as a producer for any band, but particularly one I can't imagine he would ordinarily have much to do with - they move in entirely independent circles and he is known for his strong opinions on music (and beyond). That said, I read an article a while ago where he noted that working with them was memorable and enjoyable, so I guess it was better than I'd assumed. Of course, we know Richey was really into Nirvana near the end, and Albini produced In Utero. Is the album influenced by Albini's production? Quite possibly - he famously prefers to be called an engineer, and these songs certainly aren't over-produced. I can imagine a more traditional (for the Manics) recording experience resulting in a very different album. I wonder if his hands-off approach didn't really work with the band.
As for the choice to release no singles, I feel like that is less a choice and more a function of the fact that there are no stand-out singles in these 13 tracks. Send Away the Tigers isn't my favourite album, but the singles there were at least songs you can get a bit excited about - Your Love Alone is Not Enough has aged incredibly well and I enjoy hearing it live every time they play it. Could you follow that up with any of these songs? No, not well at least. Peeled Apples starts well with a quote and a great bassline from Nicky, but has a remarkably flat chorus; James just about picks out a harmony in Richey's often disjointed lyrics in This Joke Sport Severed (which is why I can't believe these lyrics would have stayed the same had Richey been involved in the songwriting process); All is Vanity has the best chorus on the album, but otherwise I can't say much about it. For a band who have released some truly monumental singles in their career, to have so few is quite something.
The highlight is undoubtably William's Last Words, which stands out from the rest by a mile, and not (just) because Nicky sings (and sings so well!). At just over four minutes it's the longest song on the album by a good margin and feels like an actual song (chicken vs egg - is it a "song" because it's longer, or is it longer because it's a song). Musically there's some strings that add so much to the song and really hammer home the fact that the rest of the album is missing the extra "fullness".
Anyway, I rushed out to buy Journal for Plague Lovers the day it came out - I picked it up in Spillers along with a small poster of the artwork, which I still have rolled up somewhere. I played it and struggled a bit. It got filed away and I forgot about it a bit. I bought the double-cd a year later (for a fiver in the sale) and realised I'd barely listened to the LP. But having the mp3s still didn't help crack my way into the album. Some years later I was challenging myself to list all the Manics albums in order, and forgot this one entirely. I know a lot of fans really, really love this album but I'm not one of those (although that is one of the things I love so much about the band - a fanbase with passionately different opinions of what their best work is). I'd go so far as to rate it second-to-last in order of my favourite Manics albums (ahead of Lifeblood, of course). But even then that doesn't seem fair - Lifeblood feels like an album, but I can't get past thinking these are twelve demos and one excellent Nicky Wire song.
Possibly the worst part of this whole saga is that it marked the start of a period of time where I'd pretty much given up on the band. For a while I stopped buying all their singles and really tuned out, which is quite something for a band I'd loved for such a long time. More on how I came back out the other side of that is a story for another time though.
Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 13
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Spillers' Records, Cardiff
When: 18/05/09
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
