FEATURE:
Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me
Manic Street Preachers - This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours
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IN this feature that…
collects together albums that were important to me during childhood, I am minded of Manic Street Preachers’ fifth studio album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours (1998). Similar to the massive predecessor, Everything Must Go, its follow-up was a huge success. I remember loving the 1996 album. That was one of my earliest experiences of the Manics. Some of the albums I have featured in this run are from earlier in childhood. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours contains some of the best songs from the legendary Welsh band. If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next and Tsunami are great singles that are among my favourite from the band. The one that really stuck in my mind was You Stole the Sun from My Heart. It is, in my view, the standout from the album. A reason why This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours resonated was because, by 1998, I was buying a lot more albums. I have included the album before in Vinyl Corner. At the age of fourteen, music was really speaking to me. Nearly every weekend, I would get a bus into town and buy the new singles and albums that took my fancy. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours was one I bought because I already had the first single, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (released in August 1998). I also went on to buy the single, You Stole the Sun from My Heart, as that came out in March 1999. I have so much love for This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. In 1998, I might have passed my Britpop phase and was getting more into other types of music.
I feel the catchiness of the songs and the power of the band drew me to the Manic Street Preachers and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. It is an album I can listen to fresh today and get a lot from it. I also revisit the album because it takes me back to 1998 and (a time) when I bought the album. One of the Manics’ most-successful albums, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours got some terrific reviews. I think it is worth bringing in a couple of them. Pitchfork were clearly impressed when they heard This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours:
“It's been a hard road for the Manic Street Preachers. When they formed back in 1991, the cheeky band from Blackwood, Gwent, Wales, had the gall to claim they would become the biggest band in the world and then break up. Well, time has proven them at least partly right. Now beloved throughout the U.K. as the "nation's band,"-- Oasis having lost the plot and forsaken that role with Be Here Now-- they are very much of the musical establishment, while remaining a potent force of artistic and political conscience. It's just that they've finally overcome their Clash obsession and turned inward with lyrics that aim more at the personal and mundane aspects of everyday life, as opposed to their earlier grand, political sloganeering.
Weathering the disappearance of original primary lyricist Richey Edwards, the band has not only thrived, but also grown in new directions. This is My Truth Tell Me Yours is the first set of Manics lyrics written solely by bassist Nicky Wire. Wire's self- professed domestic obsession, which takes its extreme form in his love of what the British call "hoovering" (or "vacuuming," for the less Anglophile among you), differs drastically from Edwards' grand neuroses. Essentially, Wire paints with much smaller brushes, focusing on self, relationships and family while penning the Manics' most emotional and personal set of lyrics ever. Yet the personal is still informed by the political. The record's anthem, "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next," is inspired by volunteers of the International Brigade who battled the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Meanwhile, "S.Y.M.M." reflects Wire's feelings about the Hillsborough Disaster, where 96 people died at a British soccer game.
Supporting Wire's powerful lyrics, the Manic Street Preachers play with virtuosity and conviction. James Dean Bradfield's voice has never sounded better-- he's evolved into one of the best rock singers around. The band's music is also the most far- ranging of their career, incorporating a broader instrumentation that includes non- typical rock instruments like the sitar, melodica, omnichords, and organ. For example, "Ready For Drowning" possesses a moody, almost classical- sounding organ with some of the most intriguing harmonic shifts ever penned by a rock musician.
The Manic Street Preachers are also one of the few groups capable of integrating orchestral instruments in a way that still produces great rock music (check out the cello in "My Little Empire"), always avoiding the schmaltzy elevator music that can result when some rock musos get a hold of an orchestra. Meanwhile, they manage to infuse some quite dour lyrics with some of the most haunting melodies in rock this side of Radiohead. Bradfield and Moore seldom choose the obvious chords, arrangements and melodies, resulting in music that is heads- and- tails above almost any band on the planet. I'd say it's my album of the year so far, but I picked it number one last year. (It actually came out in the U.K. last fall)”.
I am going to round things off in a minute. I will finish with a review from AllMusic. If Everything Must Go was the band adapting to life without Richey Edwards – and the tragedy and pain of the time -, they were starting to look forward on This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours:
“If Everything Must Go found Manic Street Preachers coping with Richey James' sudden, unexplained disappearance, its follow-up, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, finds them putting the tragedy behind them and flourishing as a trio. Wisely, the group builds on the grand sound of Everything Must Go, creating a strangely effective fusion of string-drenched, sweeping arena rock and impassioned, brutally honest punk. Since the band never writes about anything less than major issues, whether it be political or personal, it's appropriate that their music sounds as majestic and overpowering as their pretensions. Given that the first single was titled "If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next," calling the Manics pretentious is fair game, but they make their pretensions work through a blend of intelligence, passion, and sheer musicality. This Is My Truth sports more musical variety than its predecessors, which means it can meander a bit, particularly toward the end. Nevertheless, these misgivings disappear with repeated listens, as each song logically flows into the next.
If the album ultimately isn't as raw or shattering as The Holy Bible or emotionally wrenching as Everything Must Go, it's because the ghost of Richey has been put behind them. That doesn't mean that This Is My Truth is light, easygoing listening -- the portentous, murky closer "SYMM" guarantees that -- but it's not as torturous as its immediate predecessors. But what it shares with them is a searing passion and intelligence that is unmatched among their peers on either side of the ocean -- and, in doing so, it emphasizes the Manics' uniqueness as one of the few bands of the '90s that can deliver albums as bracing intellectually as they are sonically”.
Although my early childhood years were so important regarding discovery and music coming into my life, my teenage years were formative. So many albums I bought at that time are in my life now. Manic Street Preachers’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours is one that I have very fond memories of. I remember buying the album and also picking up the singles. If you are not aware of This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, it is definitely worth some of your time. For me, it was part of a very important phase of my life. I only need to play a song like You Stole the Sun from My Heart for a few moments and I am transported back…
TO a golden time.