40 Nicky Wire: Intimism

Life has been unfaithful
And it all promised so so much
I am a relic
I am just a petrified cry…

I see liberals
I am just a fashion accessory
People send postcards
And they all hope I’m feeling well
I retreat into self-pity, it’s so easy
Where they patronise my misery

La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)

You all know the song. The third track on the Manics’ criminally underrated second album in 1993. I named it the second best Manics song ever in a 2021 post that’s the most read thing I’ve ever done (and will be the most read post of 2023). Which proves it’s correct. Because I’m a genius. I also named ‘Gold Against the Soul’ as the best album of 1992. Which is dumb. Because I’m a fucking idiot.

But why bring it up here? Well, dear reader, it’s because I am something of a writing savant. If you’re as clever as me, you’d soon understand the meaning, but I feel I need to read the room here: I know for a fact that the vast majority of my readership are likely to be lacking the media literacy, lacking the close reading skills, lacking the lateral thinking skills required to properly appreciate it. You’re all thick as pigshit, is what I’m dancing around. I doubt any of you would seriously dispute that.

The first reason (because there are double meanings here, do keep up) is to highlight what an outstanding lyricist The Wire was at their best. Always the more emotionally articulate counterpart to the horrific lacerations of Manics co-lyricist, Richey “Scratch my legs with a rusty nail” Edwards. They were also blessed with far more confidence than their partner in allowing his words space to breathe and maybe taking a whole song to make one single point beautifully rather than spittingoutamillionideaseverylineeverywordeverysy-y-y-y-y-yble. La Tristesse is maybe one of my favourite ever lyrics by any artists, detailing the sad physical decline of an army veteran (presumably from one of the more honourable antifascist wars of earlier in the 20th century) who once dedicated and risked their life for a cause but is now reduced to silently accepting empty applause as they no longer have a voice of their own and simply celebrated for their existence with empty applause. They sold their medals. They paid a bill*. It sells at market stalls, parades Milan catwalks. It exhibits The Wire’s former genius as a lyricist – to locate the humanity and the pathos within the wider social issues that their band would be highlighting. They would do the same thing with their greatest lyrical accomplishments post Richey’s disappearance. In the beautifully personal reaction to the sacrifices made by their Welsh country men in volunteering to fight in the Spanish Civil War on If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, and doubting if they would ever possess that same bravery. “Gravity keeps my head down/Or is it maybe shame?/And being so young/And being so vain”. So young. As Nicky was twenty nine when they wrote that. Or even the wonderfully sparse writing of Design for Life, the band’s first song without their fourth member, which outlines the neoliberal choking of the working class in just 13 lines. When Nicky had a good lyric, they never felt the need to stretch it out, they would just let you sit in it. It was clear that Nicky was going to have a more graceful transition into middle age, and would obviously be able to combine continued commentary on wider issues with articulate and gradual expressions of vulnerability. “Not like that Richey guy”, we all said back in 1993, “Here’s more likely to go missing in February 1995 and never be seen again”.

(*Sorry: They sold their medals. It paid a bee-YELL!)

That hasn’t been the case though. And Nicky has been shitting the bed lyrically for a long time now.

Which brings us to the second meaning: Yeah, the guy’s a relic. A petrified cry. The liberals like him, sure, which is why this dribbling line of piss of a second solo album received favourable reviews in many quarters, because they’re now a liberal’s dream: They offer both nostalgia and the safe idea of the left wing without any actual desire for it. They used to be revolutionary, they used to be a threat to the accepted neoliberal norms, and now they represent nostalgia for left wing activism in the past that is nothing close to a threat to the current state. In a way, Wire is already past the defeated warrior depicted in La Tristesse – “I retreat into self-pity, it’s so easy/Where they patronise my misery” more points to their laconic, solipsist whining on latter day Manics albums (with one obvious exception), where all commentary and anger instead turned completely inward and we were just offered endless repetition of “Wuwu, I am so dejected/Remember being young?/That was awesome/Now I’m old (x42)“. I’m not complaining about an artist changing, of course – that’s absolutely necessary, and the alternative is *shudder* Noel Gallagher – I’m just stating that Nicky is no longer any good at writing like this. It began in patches on the first completely Nicky penned album ‘This is My Truth Tell Me Yours’, but at least then the occasional clanger like “The world is full of refugees/Just like you and just like me” were offset by wonderful lyrics like Ready for Drowning and Tsunami, where Nicky was able to marry real world events (the flooding of a Welsh village to provide water for England; the ‘Silent Twins’ June and Jennifer Gibbons) and relating them back to their own vulnerabilities. But now we’re past even those platitudes, and onto something far less interesting. Far less good. The problem was when Nicky just stopped giving a shit about outside events. He got old, yes, but I’m about five years older than Nicky was when he wrote ‘Lifeblood’ and most people agree I’m producing the best and most socially aware work of my career. I’m not just churning out sixth form poetry like “Solitude sometimes is/The place that I would like to live“. At least compare that solitude to Augusto Pinochet or something!

I think it’s fair to say that I am one of the most notable Manics fans online*, yet I was one of the very few people who didn’t throw a giddy shitfit of their last album, ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’. And why was that?:

 I think this is lyrically one of Nicky Wire’s poorest albums… they so often sound unsatisfying, and simply fail to properly scan in so many of the songs. Lines like ‘I had a very bad dream/The main actor in it was me/My scream had lost its source/Like a reservoir in a summer drought‘, or ‘And in the rhythm of your voice/I find space to rejoice‘, or the embarrassingly forced entirety of Don’t Let the Night Divide Us – no matter how fantastic the surrounding song is (apart from Don’t Let the Night Divide Us. That’s a stinker) – are just.. ugh… ugly, poetically. The rhythm and tense is all over the place, with similes and metaphors forced and – here’s that word again – clunky. ‘Girls in their summer dress had flown’?? Urgh, Wire, sort it out.

(*oh? You don’t think so? What other authors of 37’645 word articles do you think should be considered? Are they pinned to the top of the Manics fan subreddit? Clean your arse before you talk to me)

On ‘Ultra Vivid…’ though – and on so many of Nicky’s latter day lyrical stinkers – JDB and Sean Moore happened to be working overtime to produce an extremely rich backing* and great songs to give the words something to hide behind. Guy’s forgotten how metaphors work! Everything is like that or like this: stop treating the listener like an idiot! Present the story or the imagery and trust us to infer what you’re singing about! How has this person gone from sixth form poetry to GCSE English?!

(*apart from the overly glossy production of Dave Eringa giving it a sheen similar to all nine albums he’s produced for them. They need to work with different producers but that’s a debate for another day)

Well now we don’t even have that. We have music that could have been included on C86, only with the occasional plinky-plonk piano like Jools Holland was invited to guest. Apart from Keeper of the Flame* which is just – and you’ll like this – Cum On Feel the Noize. And instead of JDB – one of the alltime best rock vocalists (“It paid a bee-YELL!”) – we get… Nicky. I don’t want to criticise their voice too much, it worked well on his first album and on occasional Manics songs when it came packaged with interesting lyrics. But here, speaking some of the most lazy rhyming dictionary nonsense that they’ve ever produced, it can’t help but drone at times. You know the phrase “could sing the phonebook and make it sound good”? Well, Nicky was never one of those singers. And here they’ve basically given themselves the phonebook to sing. These songs were apparently written and produced over the last ten years. Ten years. These songs. People were complaining that SZA took more than five years to release her latest record. Spoiler alert: It’s better than this.

(*keeper of what flame, Nicholas?? The lyrics are, as per, vague nonsense. Are they referring to the ‘flame’ of leftism in music?? What?? Because you were left wing in the early 90s?? This is the most liberal album ever!! “I identify as left wing so should be thought of left wing even though I have nothing to back that up”. Good God they feel like a liberal**

**they were some great lyrics on that album, because Nicky was actually talking about things beyond their own navel. Your moans alone are not enough, not enough, not enough)

So why is it here? I’ve shortened the list to just forty records this year, and pontificated about how there will be far more stringent criteria to be included. And yet we have this album, which is – to speak poetically – generally a pile of ill considered poop.

Because Nicky has been here nine times before. And I only started making these lists in 2007, long after the Manics were really my North Star. If I made this blog in the 90s… firstly, I’d probably be a billionaire now because that is some early internet adoption and I would have sold the blog to Activision for $6bil, but before that it would have been a lot more Manics. I hate nostalgia, yet here I am offering space and time to an artist chiefly because I used to really like their music more than 25 years ago. Sure, I’ve loved a lot of their work in the last quarter of a century , but they’ve never been close to that all encompassing love that I still have for their first three albums. It’s going to take a lot to kill that. Sure, they’ve never been on the Alex Jones show spouting antisemitism, but they’re dedicated social-fascists, which isn’t much better. All music made by any members of the Manics will always be included on this list until the day it/I die.

The sadness will never go, will never go away, baby, it’s here to stay.

2021 #31, 2020 #9, 2019 #83, 2018 #55, 2014 #1, 2013 #20, 2010 #15, 2009 #2, 2007 #3 (with the Manic Street Preachers)