FEATURE:
Roses in the Hospital
In Need of New Love: Manic Street Preachers’ Gold Against the Soul at Thirty
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THE second studio…
album from Welsh warriors Manic Street Preachers, Gold Against the Soul was released on 21st June, 1993. Although some consider it to be one of the band’s weakest albums, it did get a reissue and remastering back in 2020. I want to shed some light and love on an album that turns thirty very soon – and contains a couple of Manic Street Preachers’ best songs. A year on from their incredible debut, Generation Terrorists, Gold Against the Soul received mixed reviews. Their debut contained Slash ‘n’ Burn, Motorcycle Emptiness, and Stay Beautiful. Whilst many critics used some of those song titles to attack or undermine the disappointing – their view, not mine – Gold Against the Soul, it is a case of history reassessing the album. If critics in 1993 were a little spiky and unwilling to embrace it, the Manic Street Preachers’ second studio album has gained more love since its release. On its thirtieth anniversary it does deserve some focus and fresh inspection. I am going to come to reviews and press around the reissue that came out in 2020. First, Wikipedia compiled some of the critical reaction to Gold Against the Soul. It is a divisive album, but I think that it is terrific and boasts some wonderful moments:
“Both the NME and Q have since revised their opinions of Gold Against the Soul in some later articles, with the former's Paul Stokes opining that its short, "snappy, driven and focused" length contrasts with other albums' "indulgently lengthy tracklistings", and suggesting that "with its big, radio-friendly Dave Eringa production, it's easy to see why Gold Against the Soul caused such a stir compared to the wild, almost feral rock of Generation Terrorists that preceded it a year earlier. However, with the band's more beefed up, arena-friendly sound emerging in subsequent years, this album is no longer so at odds with the general Manics aesthetic." The latter publication, in a retrospective review of The Holy Bible, looked back on Gold Against the Soul as "an underrated pop-metal effort that's armed with a handful of bona-fide big tunes", and cited "La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)" as its highlight.
In his retrospective review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described Gold Against the Soul as a "flawed but intriguing second album". Sputnikmusic writer Dave de Sylvia called it "a fine, and certainly underappreciated, album which fell victim to the weight of expectation generated by its predecessor and fell well short of the standard set by its successor, The Holy Bible, released the following year. The album has many flaws – it's rushed; it's formulaic in parts; the music was sometimes compromised in the search for a hit, but behind these flaws lies a solid rock 'n' roll album with a deeper, more profound edge than most any other rock album you'll hear." Joe Tangari of Pitchfork, however, lambasted Gold Against the Soul as a "labored, sophomore-slumping hard rock turd that had them looking washed up early", concluding that "there was really no preparation for the intensity, perversion and genuine darkness of The Holy Bible" which would follow in 1994.
"It's fair to say that history judged Gold… slightly unjustly," wrote Drowned in Sound's Ben Patashnik in 2008. He added that the album was "heavy, melodic and packed full of huge choruses: radio-friendly doesn’t have to be used in the pejorative sense and it's certainly more considered and mature than their debut." Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger hailed Gold Against the Soul as "a half-classic of sensitive metal" that built upon the style of the Manics' earlier single "Motorcycle Emptiness". He highlighted the "confused-nihilist persona internalised and fucked up to the point of collapse, while the riffs just keep on playing." In 2013, "La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)" was chosen by Clash as one of their favourite Manic Street Preachers singles”.
I wonder whether Manic Street Preachers wanted to make a phenomenal debut and then call it quits. Not that the band themselves provided little excellence on Gold Against the Soul. Many critics felt that there was a lack of quality control and brilliant songs after such a strong debut. I want to turn my attention to reviews for the 2020 reissue of Gold Against the Soul. It allowed for re-evaluation and fresh ears. If Manic Street Preachers lead James Dean Bradfield is not hot on the album, the fact it has been reissued shows that maybe there is a bit more appreciation of it from the band. This is what Popmatters said in their feature:
“Gold Against the Soul is a bit crap, isn’t it? Those with even a passing knowledge of the Manic Street Preachers will know how the story goes. Generation Terrorists, was the band’s spiky, politically vicious call to arms, The Holy Bible their devastatingly bleak masterpiece, and Everything Must Go their commercial rebirth. That leaves Gold Against the Soul as the runt of the Manic’s litter. An unloved largely disowned folly that saw the band’s arena rock ambitions run away with them. However, like everything with the Welsh rockers, the truth is a little more complicated than that.
By the time the band got down to writing what would become Gold Against the Soul, it’s fair to say that their career hadn’t gone completely to plan. The band’s debut, Generation Terrorists hadn’t sold more than Appetite For Destruction and they hadn’t split up. With that headline-grabbing line from their manifesto that wasn’t a manifesto unfulfilled, the band were left with a stark choice. They could quietly disband and celebrate a glorious failure, or they could embark on an actual music career and find out what the Manics might sound like next.
That leads us to Gold Against the Soul, an ambitious, polished rock record with the band embracing their American rock influences. A big sound for a group with big ideas. So what happened? Why didn’t it turn out to be the breakout album they were striving for, and why has it been seemingly consigned to the bargain bin of their back catalogue?
Possible explanations have been debated amongst the band, fans, and press for years. Maybe, they were simply victims of circumstance; collateral damage as the British music press gradually turned their back on grunge and began to champion more English sounding bands like Suede and Blur. Maybe, their narrative was a little more confused now that they didn’t resemble the sloganeering punks of their debut. Perhaps the wider listening public struggled to connect with the songs. Or was it just wasn’t very good? In all likelihood, it was probably for a mixture of these reasons
The opening of the album still stands up as one of their most thrilling to date. The album kicks off with the razor-wire riff of the fan favorite “Sleepflower”, a song that immediately bridges the gap between Gold Against the Soul and Generation Terrorists. Nonetheless, it’s frontman James Dean Bradfield’s more textured guitar work and the psychedelic bridge that signifies the substantial musical strides the band had made since their debut. This shift in dynamics is startlingly evident on lead single, “From Despair to Where”. Containing some of Bradfield’s best lead licks, the band fills out their sound with organ, layers of guitars and percussion to add more texture to their music. It also features the kind of sweeping string arrangements that would become a staple of their sound during their mid-nineties commercial peak”.
There are a couple of other features I want to come to. Gold Against the Soul reached number eight in the U.K. in 1993. Some of its songs are still played on the radio, but I do feel there is this dismissal of an album that is worthy of much more. CLASH revisited and spotlighted Manic Street Preachers’ Gold Against the Soul in 2020. They made some interesting observations:
“It is, perhaps, harsh to argue that the pyrotechnic verbals were a convenient distraction from a musical identity crisis, but ‘Gold Against The Soul’ stands alone in their catalogue. There are those, most notably Bradfield, Sean Moore and Nicky Wire, who prefer to unfairly propel their opprobrium towards the synth-driven, immersive melancholia of 2004’s ‘Lifeblood’, but it’s nowhere close to the soft metal posturing found here.
Back in 1993, as bands are wont to do, Bradfield naturally, if not resoundingly, defended the band’s new direction in Melody Maker: "The first album was more statement than intent. This one is far more musical, more current. We were a little too scared to make a hash of things last time. But we don't like slagging off past records – it's like we're despising our fans for buying them."
However, speaking to the NME earlier this year about this reissue, Nicky offered some of the least emphatic sales patter the music industry has had in a while, saying “it’s kind of misunderstood and unloved by us. James, Sean and I aren’t the greatest fans of it, but our fans have a peculiar attachment to it.” And this is ultimately the point.
Whether coming to it off the rabid frenzy of the self-hyped debut and the majesty of ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ or casting around for similarly stadium-sized melody in their previous releases after falling in love with ‘Everything Must Go’ at that start of Manics Mk. 2, many fans will have been motivated to find much to love in its ten curious songs.
With its opening trio of ‘Sleepflower’, ‘From Despair To Where’ and ‘La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)’, this was certainly an album suited to favourable first impressions. Five minutes in to ‘Generation Terrorists’ and it’s already time for ‘Natwest – Barclays – Midlands – Lloyds’ and, for all its indisputable brilliance as a record, it takes a little over a minute for ‘The Holy Bible’ to offer up “He’s a boy. You want a girl? Tear off his cock, tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want.”
The opening of ‘Sleepflower’ has entered into Manics folklore, a cat and mouse tease between Bradfield’s tendency to pick out its initial notes on stage and the adoring crowds daring him to keep going. For a song so rooted in contemplation of insomnia – “I feel like I’m missing pieces of sleep, a memory fades to a pale landscape” – it’s a stadium rock opener and, however embarrassed by it they are now, one which has always been received in raptures on those occasions Clash has witnessed them giving it an airing.
‘From Despair To Where’, the first single to be released from the album, is beautiful. The sense of alienation that appealed to the hardcore fans in those early interviews far more than the pot shots at sacred cows is foregrounded, with a masterful vocal performance and gloriously aching string section. “There’s nothing nice in my head; the adult world took it all away” is a much more fitting Manic manifesto than hubristic twaddle about 16 million album sales. It is a template to which they have adhered many times since and one of several undeniable classics on this curious record.
An early tracklist for the album is included amongst the pictures of original lyric sheets at the back of the beguiling A4 hardback and reveals the mercifully abandoned act of self-sabotage that would have seen ‘Drug Drug Druggy’ positioned as the record’s second track. Its opening is so early Nineties rock that you might actually catch a nasty case of Red Hot Chilli Peppers from its virulent early bassline, before it transitions into a hoarse chug that would have got a two minute video slot on Top Of The Pops while everyone went to make a cup of tea or put another jumper on. It is fucking awful and hasn’t been played live for twenty-six years, despite its desperately keen-to-be-liked chorus. It’s also absolutely hilarious – “Drug drug druggy, need sensation like my baby; snort your lines you’re so aware” – and curiously forgivable, if you’re on their side.
Listen to ‘La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)’ and, most notably, ‘Roses In The Hospital’ and Wire’s recent comment that “James was a slave to melody at the time. He was going through a Queen phase” makes plenty of sense, even if such behaviour is not to be encouraged. The former highlights one of the band’s finest contradictions, pursuing a baggy beat despite vehemently railing against that particular scene for several years prior to it. Like the figure whose prejudice melts in the company of an individual from a people they claim to despise, baggy was apparently shit but suddenly the Happy Mondays were in the spirit of punk and a cover of ‘Wrote For Luck’ turned up as a B-side on the single release of ‘Roses In The Hospital’. That track is at its best in its full-length album form, the chorus of “We don’t want your fucking love” wisely excised for its chart battle with Meatloaf”.
On 21st June, Manic Street Preachers’ Gold Against the Soul is thirty. It is an album that, whilst not on the same level as Generation Terrorists or 1996’s Everything Must Go, still has a lot to recommend about it. Of course, the band followed up Gold Against the Soul with 1994’s The Holy Bible – seen by many as their masterpiece and most important statement. XSNOIZE also reviewed the 2020 reissue of the Manics’ second studio album:
“For those who aren’t already aware, this was the band’s second LP. It followed the confrontational bombast of debut Generation Terrorists with a heavier and more polished sound, as they tried to figure out which direction to take next. As it turned out, this would lead to the raw, unsettling post-punk of The Holy Bible and the disappearance of lyricist and guitarist Richey Edwards in 1995. The three-piece Manics carried on and surged their way into the big league, with the epic Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours selling by the truckload. The rest, as they say, is history. Gold Against The Soul pales in overall quality in comparison to all those aforementioned records, but it is certainly not an insignificant moment.
They wanted to sell 10 million copies of Generation Terrorists and then split. What a statement that would have been. When that (inevitably) didn’t happen, it was time to find another way to justify their existence as a group. Gold Against The Soul would begin a pattern of the band usually reacting against their previous album as a means of moving forward. Feeling that the first album was perhaps a few tracks too long and a bit too heavy on the reverbed power-rock production, the follow-up was to be shorter, heavier and more polished production-wise. This approach made for a slightly hit-and-miss collection overall, which highlights both strengths and weaknesses. Luckily, through this process of trial and error, they figured out where their strengths lay, and the band were able to form their own essence adaptable to various different facets and styles, one of the vital ingredients that kept the Manic Street Preachers relevant for decades to come and still counting.
It’s fair to say that the four-piece Manics were an alternative rock group, with more of an emphasis on the rock than there was from the mid-90s onwards. The heavier sound of their early years was probably at its most apparent on Gold Against The Soul. For sure it certainly gave of us some of James Dean Bradfield’s finest guitar work, the electrifying riff of ‘Sleepflower’ being a classic example. ‘From Despair To Where’ is another eternal standout from the band’s career, proving their unique gift for converting energy from pain into something joyous, uplifting and life-affirming, while the brilliantly dynamic ‘La Tristesse Durera’ repeats a similar trick, delivering another irresistible chorus and an ecstatic JDB solo. The gritty ‘Yourself’ signposts the way to the album that would follow a year later, and on ‘Life Becoming A Landslide’, heavy rock riffage is counterbalanced by the melodic release of its tender, introspective hooks as well as Richey’s striking and bleak lyrical view of the world.
There’s more superb guitar work on the intro, verses and bridge of ‘Drug Drug Druggy’ before the wheels come off thanks to its somewhat flaccid chorus. ‘Roses In The Hospital’ is the glorious sound of a band riding their own wave, a smart piece of stadium funk-rock with a twist of Bowie’s ‘Sound And Vision’, before ‘Nostalgic Pushead’ delivers something not too unlike The Clash meets Van Halen, powering into a driving chorus. The frantic hard rock of ‘Symphony Of Tourette’ almost ventures into metal territory, with a somewhat overpowered yell of a chorus causing the song to veer off track. The magnificent title track encapsulates all of the album’s strengths and wraps things up perfectly. A fine end to a flawed record with some timeless moments.
As with all of the reissues being added to Manic Street Preachers catalogue, this edition also collects the B-sides that accompanied the singles of the time. As was the case throughout their career, these non-album tracks would usually offer clues as to where the band would go in future. The wondrous ‘Donkeys’ finds them in a gentler, more serene mode that acts as a forebearer to their late 90’s output, with Bradfield really finding the soul in his yearning vocal. Superb in terms of production, the militant ‘Comfort Comes’ is very much a prototype of the sharp post-punk they would explore next on The Holy Bible, while the gorgeous acoustic textures of ‘Hibernation’ wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Everything Must Go. In contrast, and very much in keeping with the hard rock tendencies of Gold Against The Soul is the divisive ‘Patrick Bateman’, where no-nonsense guitars, generous doses of angst, and some highly questionable lyrics make for one of the band’s most memorable, if somewhat infamous B sides.
Continuing to add to the touches of funk is the resigned sigh of ‘Are Mothers Saints’, which is elevated by another stunning JDB vocal, while the rip-roaring ‘Us Against You’ is a filthy shot of Guns N Roses-like punk. A quick thrash though McCarthy’s ‘Charles Windsor’ provides one of three covers, alongside an inferior take on the Happy Mondays’ ‘Wrote For Luck’, and a thrilling, raw live rendition of The Clash’s ‘What’s My Name’.
A disc of demo versions of the album tracks contains some fascinating glimpses into how the LP might have sounded minus the slick rock production. ‘Sleepflower’ in particular has all its riffage intact, as well as some great percussion and drum work from the hugely underrated Sean Moore. Bradfield’s full-throated vocal on an early version of ‘From Despair To Where’ is enough to send shivers down the spine, a voice that comes across as more youthful and naive on the demo of ‘La Tristesse Durera’, which also comes with some rather interesting backing harmonies. Other highlights include a rough, riotous live version of ‘Yourself’, the clearer emphasis on ‘Life Becoming A Landslide”s harrowing lyrical content, and the reveal of a funk loop behind the title track, which also features some tasty low-slung bass from Nicky Wire.
We also get an almost-complete selection of remixes from the period. Ashley Beedle provides two big beat-flavoured takes on ‘Roses In The Hospital’, while the same song gets twisted into Orb-style dub techno on the Filet O Gang and ECG remixes. These are all pretty standard fare aside from a slow, booming and chaotic remake of ‘LA Tristesse Durera’ by the Chemical Brothers.
Across this 2CD edition of this remarkable band’s second LP, there is much extra material worth splashing out on if you only own the original album. It is a shame that the vinyl version doesn’t come with a second record featuring the B sides, but it does come with an affordable price tag. Flawed certainly, but with plenty of solid moments to make it an essential purchase”.
I am a fan of Gold Against the Soul. It is still revealing layers and surprises after thirty years. If the band would hit new heights shortly after, there was some mixed reaction to their second album. Manic Street Preachers are still going strong today. I wonder whether they are going to say any words about Gold Against the Soul closer to its thirtieth anniversary. I feel that people should check out…
THIS fine album.