This is going to be unpopular but I actually feel this way about Let Robeson Sing. I love the story behind it, I think it’s awesome that they clearly revere him so much and it’s a perfect piece of history for them to foreground but I don’t think it’s that great a song 
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THB is my favourite album but I love Tsunami. Would echo people’s opinions on You Stole…not a bad song but just sick of it now.
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I really like the David Holmes remix, scuffs it up just the right amount
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I’ve not heard it but I’ll seek it out, thanks!
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Imagining it now. Thanks for all your hard work NHS workers. Now do you wanna hear Archives of Pain or Revol? 
THB is among my favourite albums but I see the thinking, I guess.
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Just thought I’d revisit both Postcards and Resistance as they are the least revisited manics albums - yep they deffo aren’t keepers - the combination of MOR references (or downright thefts ala Lenny Kravitz on Hazelton Avenue) and repetitive, trite lyrical navel gazing means I’m happy never to listen to these ever again - if anyone on this thread wants either of these (they are the deluxe book versions with the 2cd of demos) pm me and will get them in the post 
On first listen of the new album bit worried it’s a bit similar to these (especially lyrically) but will be listening to it in earnest this week
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Surprised they didn’t play anything off Futureology, although a lot of guest vocalists really bring that album to life.
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Gave ‘Postcards…’ a listen today - really enjoyed it.
‘Golden Platitudes’ is in my Manics top ten.
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Yeah, totally get the love for ‘Golden Platitudes’. Quite like ‘Some Kind Of Nothingness’ too.
Think even their least essential albums are spotty rather than outright bad.
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I get why they don’t play very many songs off The Holy Bible too often, but I can’t understand why they don’t play Faster each and every show without fail. Imagine having that song in your back pocket and not bothering to play it. Along with Design for Life and Motorcycle Emptiness, it’s pretty much the essential Manics song.
On the current tour they appear to have found time to cover Sweet Child o sodding Mine but don’t have room for Faster. I don’t get it.
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The period where they played an acoustic version of Faster was worse!
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Funnily enough I also revisited Postcards today. Honestly, I felt nothing. The album does absolutely nothing for me. It just rattles along like a Manics parody in full flow. Everything just sounds exactly like it should, it’s just not in any way good or memorable.
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Journal —> Postcards is a legit contender for one of the worst quality drop-offs in the space of a single album ever.
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thanks 
it’s interesting how differently people perceive the sound of ‘Lifeblood’. Not saying it’s wrong but it seems odd to me that people describe the album as ‘cold’ and ‘sterile’. In fact the only track I’d say fits that description to me is ‘…Richard Nixon’ but that’s as much to do with JDB’s curiously detached delivery of the lyric (not representative of his vocal style on this album. imo he’s as impassioned as he’s ever been on ‘Lifeblood’) as the somewhat robotic rhythms.
To me, the warmth you describe as being ‘beneath the surface’ is front and centre. JDB’s vox are a factor in this but I also find most of the arrangements have this quality too. There’s something very comforting and smooth about the (ingenious) arrangements but they’re also incredibly immersive and almost playful at times (I’m thinking particularly of ‘…Richard Nixon’, ‘I live to fall asleep’ and ‘Solitude Sometimes Is’ here) which stops it, bar a couple of instances, from descending into blandness.
Finally, regarding the sound, it’s interesting that you mention Coldplay, Keane, and ‘Soft Rock’ because i I really don’t hear that. Again, not saying you’re wrong at all but to me this album really has the sound of late 70’s to mid 80’s art rock. Seems to me they really start leaning into the oft mentioned influence of simple minds circa ‘new gold dream’, the funkier and more electronic side of Bowie, early U2, new order, associates, even a bit of XTC. I do think a lot of this is very subjective though and I certainly wasn’t hearing all this when I first listened back in '04 - not sure what I was hearing to be honest!
Agree with everything you say about ‘…Richard Nixon’ being the lead single. I grew to like it but after hearing the single a few times I vividly remember watching their top of the pops performance of it and just thinking they’d lost it. James was wearing a leather jacket and playing a flying V and the bands performance was weirdly subdued. they just looked to me like they didn’t have a clue what they were doing anymore. I’m more than happy to have been proved wrong on that front though, even it it did take me 17 years to realise it! 
still loads for me to discover with this album, even ‘glasnost’ has grown on me, very good song.
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Is an amazing song, worth the price of admission alone
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The title track from Postcards got an airing tonight (in James’s acoustic bit)…
Tbf if I had to pick one for a playlist it’d either be this one or Some Kind Of Nothingness
They were so good last night. New songs sounded brilliant and it was just a really uplifting set. Exactly what I needed. Wasn’t packed out in there though. How the Stereophonics can play two dates at the principality stadium and the manics just about manage two at the CIA is beyond me.
setlist spoiler: That Sweet Child of Mine cover was incredible. Expected it to be an intro to Motown Junk and then they did the whole thing. Nailed the solo too, fair play
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Reckon he’s probably a better guitarist than Slash, to be fair. He learned everything he knows from him (the pentatonic scale), but he does a lot more with it, imo.
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