Manic Street Preachers – Everything Must Go (1996)

I remember the first time I ever heard Manic Street Preachers. It must've been something like 1994 in my English class at school. Our normal English teacher had her son substituting for her. He was studying to become an English teacher and he had spent some time in the UK related to his studies where he had fallen in love with the music of Manic Street Preachers. He played us a couple of songs in class. This was before pretty much anyone knew anything about the band in Finland. Everything Must Go was the first album to gain some recognition in Finland, but it wasn't until two years later when This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours was released that the band became popular in the Finnish mainstream. So, I can quite confidently say that I knew about the band way before most people in Finland. I didn't really start listening to them properly at that time though.



Back in those days I was still mostly just listening to power metal and hard rock. In the seventh and eighth grade I started listening to the 60s and 70s music and also that led me to like some new Brit-pop bands. Manic Street Preachers wasn't among the first ones. I was much more familiar with bands like Blur, Pulp and Oasis. In 1998, Manics started playing in the radio and on MTV and that's when I remembered the band from my English class. Fairly soon after, I travelled to Seinäjoki in the Finnish west coast to the music festival Provinssirock, where Blur and Manic Street Preachers were playing back to back. Even though Blur was a bigger thing to me, I remember being excited to see Manics play live as well. This was my only live experience of Britpop in the actual 90s.

The album starts with mostly acoustic song Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier, that only turns on the electric guitars about halfway. There are some strange harp sounds on top of the song. This is followed by the biggest hit on the album, A Design for Life. For a long time, this was my favourite song from the band and I guess it still is even though it's been so much overplayed. I love how the chorus explodes into life after a more hesitant verse. Kevin Carter has a steady beat that makes you nod your head along. This is a good example of political lyrics by Manics. As a teenager I obviously wasn't aware of anything like this, which means that I've only started noticing these political themes in their music later on. Enola / Alone is obviously a word play of the same word backwards. I like the powerful guitars in the song. They're quite similar to the guitars Oasis had in many of their songs. The title-track Everything Must Go starts with galloping rhythms that don't sound that interesting, but when the song gets going and the strings come in as well, this song turns into one of the best ones on the album. I always like it when the original mood of the song changes dramatically mid-song. Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky starts with picked acoustic guitars and a harp, which is quite a big step away from the general sound of the album. It's good to get this quieter moment in the middle of overdriven guitars and powerful blasting even if the song itself isn't that interesting. The Girl Who Wanted to Be God gets the power chords going again. I feel like there's a slight Celtic influence in the song's sound. Removables reminds me of Blur. It has that similar kind of beat and playfulness that was heard in many songs on Parklife. Australia is another hit song from the album. It has some of the most impressive power chords on the album and I really like the melodies as well. Interiors (Song for Willem De Kooning) has muffled sounding vocals in most of the song which gives nice power for the actual vocals when they kick in in the chorus. Further Away is a light rock song that shows some of the best vocals by James Dean Bradfield. The album ends with No Surface All Feeling, which has sharp overdriven guitars that almost remind me of Pixies.

I remember the music video for A Design for Life really well. We still had MTV at home when this song was released and the video was playing there quite regularly. The video itself is quite normal live playing video, but the hairstyles and clothes are quite hilarious from today's perspective. It's a good reminder of how big clothes were around that time. I myself wore quite similar too large outfits of beige trousers and collared shirts. If I'm not completely mistaken, the video is from Roundhouse in London. In the background there are videos of the police beating demonstrators while the upper classes hang out in their top hats in the Royal Ascot and in polo events.

Everything Must Go was the first album Manics released after the band's rhythm guitarist and lyricist Richey Edwards disappeared. At first, people were a bit sceptical about the album, but it won the fans over. In my own opinion, this is their best album of all times. It has the best song material and there's lightness that isn't there in the early albums. Also, it's not quite as cheesy as some of the following albums that maybe got a bit too far away from band's political origins.

Listen to the album on Spotify.