Garry Mulholland
CD OFTHEWEEK
The real clue to What the Manics Did Next had nothing to do with launching their sixth album in Cuba, nor their much-hyped return to a revolutionary punk-rock agenda. Nope, the real clue was tucked away on the B-side of last year’s limited-edition, back-to-basics, number one single Masses Against the Classes, where James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore treated the fans to an exuberant cover of Chuck Berry’s Rock and Roll Music.
It was an enthusiastically pointless pub-rock joy, and sounded like a band desperately trying to shake off their increasingly humourless, flabby-arsed, Brit-friendly AOR, even if it meant being retro and corny. And so it proves from the outset of Know Your Enemy, as Bradfield recklessly unleashes a bunch of old Johnny Thunders geetar licks on Found that Soul, followed by Ocean Spray, a clean, sweet, acoustic stroll reminiscing on the death of Bradfield’s mother. Those who only check in for the band’s post-Richey angst-with-orchestras might like to leave about now.
Know Your Enemy, produced with an ear for invention, spontaneity and grungy din by Dave Eringa, Mike Hedges and David Holmes, is all over the place and so blatantly derivative of so many bands. The album features your fave Welsh rockers performing in the style of the Beach Boys (So Why So Sad), Sonic Youth (Intravenous Agnostic), Joy Division (Dead Martyrs), New Order (Baby Elian), Jesus and Mary Chain (the coda of My Guernica) and, on The Year of Purification and His Last Painting, good old REM. Unoriginal? Well, yes. But it does make Know Your Enemy more fun to listen to than anything since their Generation Terrorists debut.
It reminds you that the Manics are, essentially, all the misguided and muddled bits of the Clash without a London Calling or White Riot to make it all right. Which, in a world of Coldplays and David Grays, remains surprisingly lovable.
soundbites
Johnny Cash: American III: Solitary Man (American Recordings) The third in the American trilogy of the Man in Black’s Rick Rubin-produced albums of covers, this is the first since Cash was diagnosed with the neurological disease Shy-Drager syndrome. But he’s a born fighter, and his choice of Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down as opener is undoubtedly significant. Stripped down and eerie, these 14 songs cover everyone from Neil Diamond to Will “Palace” Oldham, but the Man engulfs all of them in his wry, bleak world-view. Particularly, his mesmerising rendition of U2’s One turns a love song into a dark lament, and his haunted version of Nick Cave’s death-row anthem The Mercy Seat is as telling as anything in his canon. Dave Simpson
Various: Bump House Culture 3 (Gallo) Midrand club Bump is getting rid of its plastic teenybopper dance-haven image by sharpening up its music, and this CD is proof. It’s an energising collection of funky house tunes by mix masters like Funkstar de Luxe, Junior Sanchez and Afrika Bambaata, decently put together by DJ Scotty. It’s not prizewinning stuff, but it will get you going. A bonus EP with more trance-housey stuff, mixed by Trinity, is also included. Riaan Wolmarans