MANIC STREET PREACHERS Best Album Poll

the new remaster of TIMTTMY replaces "Nobody Loved You" with "Prologue to History," and while I guess I should be offended by the revisionism, it's an undeniable upgrade, even if I'd also have swapped in "Black Holes for the Young" where "You're Tender and You're Tired" sits.

anyway Brad maintains the ability to anticipate how I hear things a few months in advance cause RIF now sounds like another strong album when I was sure it represented a step down. so I remain thinking their consistency is sort of ridiculous at this point.

oh, and for anyone out there still looking for hidden gems, the recent b-side "Mirror Gaze" should have been on the album proper, and not only because of its great opening lyric "I've made some sense of emptiness / I've learned to love me less and less" and its clear debt to "Blinded by the Light". (the Wire-sung "Concrete Fields" is surprisingly good too)

for some reason I keep forgetting Rewind the Film exists and then it knocks me out every year when the weather starts to cool

also "the endless parade of old Etonian scum line the front benches, so what is to be done?" is extra satisfying at the moment

https://i.imgur.com/CO4c4nE.jpg

I know it has...some detractors on here...but every year I like TIMTTMY more. it's their Up - overlong and eternally grey. which i love

nah, it's mostly crap.

I also quite like it. It's probably two songs too long but the sustained sullen mood it hits makes it stand out among the four Manics albums I've heard

been really digging the late records lately...mostly pretty sad/weary songs by aging dudes who know/sense that things are pretty unlikely to change drastically for the better in their lifetimes. I made a lil playlist of the best post-JFPL stuff for the curious

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4NZ4Po28IbM49eefsOIJAx?si=663f94e2bbf34c0e

Oh that's handy, i haven't heard the last one at all. Futurology was remarkable for a band so long in the tooth, can't think of any bands from that era who have pulled something that good off in the last ten years, i was properly amazed.

of the post-JFPL albums I'd go

Rewind the Film
Postcards From a Young Man
Futurology
Resistance is Futile

a couple decent b-sides in this period as well. they should pester underworld to produce their next one.

I am surprised Gold Against The Soul did as well as it did because it is my favorite Manics album and I thought my vast minority was more vast than that.