SOUND BITES

Now, for the continuation of my "catch-up" series of quick reviews; it's meant to bring me up to date and help me wade through the backlog of unfinished reviews from this year, so these should be considered more as passing nods of acknowledgment than fully fleshed out thoughts on the albums below. I've scored 'em anyway but, as you'll see, I didn't skip over any Album of the Year contenders here. MANIC STREET PREACHERS Resistance is Futile April 13, 2018 • Columbia Highlights  People Give In •  International Blue •  Liverpool Revisited This far along into their career, Manic Street Preachers don't exactly owe anyone reminders of why they're regarded as one of the UK's landmark bands of the last thirty years; and yet, they still manage to find ways to creep back into the collective consciousness (admittedly, much more so at home than abroad). On their thirteenth album, the trio remain committed to their rock roots while adding colourful k...

It doesn't take a great deal of creative effort to paint a picture of darkness; in fact, if you look at the musical climate The Holy Bible comes from, it was practically par for the course in 1994. However, the art squarely came into focus for Manic Street Preachers; their third album is also the last to be played on by guitarist and frequent lyricist Richey Edwards. Suffering from severe depression while battling substance abuse and anorexia, Edwards would disappear five months after The Holy Bible 's release; his body was never found. It's an incredibly tragic end for such a talented creative force, and it's one that casts a long shadow over this album; mixed in among recurring political and social commentaries are horrifying accounts of gender anxiety, suicidal depression, self-harm and mortal anorexia. It's a relentlessly bleak, terrifying and hopeless album, and Edwards' disappearance only serves to amplify its dark emotions. From a purely musical sta...

Somewhere along the way, record labels figured out what most businesses already knew: there were good and bad times to sell your wares. The Christmas shopping season was a given; there were also benefits to selling in spring (with Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, graduation etc.) and early fall (as kids went back to school and parents started thinking about St. Nick). So, record labels developed a strong tendency to release what they considered their best shots at hit records during these peak selling weeks. If you look at a full year's worth of releases, you'll probably notice a glut in April, May, September and October. Which makes my collecting habit a somewhat boring proposition eight months of the year.