Wednesday 7 July 2010

Manic Street Preachers - Postcards From a Young Man

Before you ask - no I don't have a copy and no I can't share the songs with you. I was lucky enough to hear two songs from the new Manic Street Preachers album, 'Postcards From a Young Man'. I was invited with a handful of people to hear a couple of songs at the Sony offices in London. I'm assuming they were rush mixes although they sounded as good as finished. I heard the title track 'Postcards from a young man' and a second song called 'The end of love'. They both sounded like potential singles. They both sounded very upbeat. Surprisingly happy in the vocal department. Postcards sounded like motown/doo wop crossed with Queen. It sounded excellent. The beat and tempo of 'Design for Life' with a piano over the intro and a bit at the end that sounded like the finale of Queen's 'Somebody to love'. It was grand and excellent and pretty catchy. 'End of love' started with some descending arpeggios on the guitar and a rim shot pattern on the drums before crashing into a majestic song with lots of vocals and harmonies and a guitar solo. Sounded a bit like the Darkness at times (no falsetto though!). Both songs were very much Manics songs - but Postcards with its piano bits could be a different band if you couldn't hear the vocal. I'm no Manics super fan - but I quite like the big hits...these two songs I heard sound like big pop hits. They aren't listen-in-your-bedroom-hate-yourself-and-want-to-die numbers, they are grand rocking pop songs with catchy bits and stuff you could hum.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the review! What were the oppinions of the others in the room? Positive?

AbrahamLove said...

We were split up so there was just one another person in the room with me and they liked it too. We agreed that the songs sounded big and catchy and the sort of thing that would get good radio play.

AbrahamLove said...

I can't get on the foreverdelayed forum where I see there is now a bit of discussion about this. to clarify...The Darkness reference in this post was really just about the guitar solo in the middle of 'end of love' and the big sound. There's no falsetto. The Do-wop reference was just about the rhythm of 'postcards' - i.e. it shuffles and that it had a piano. If you could hear me - I could hum it! What I will say is that it didn't sound forced or contrived. It sounded like a band with energy and spirit and it sounded like they were really enjoying themselves. That was the first thing I felt when listening. When the vocals came in on 'end of love' it sounded as if James was almost smiling. I don't mean that in a touch-feely way - I mean it sounded like he was singing with a big grin on his face.

ALove said...

Just remembered also that 'End of love' was full of strings. Once it hit the chorus - that's one of the thing that made it sound so big.

ALove said...

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