Manic Street Preachers - Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (Columbia)
UK release date: 30 April 2007
If ever there was a band that you'd have bet your house on to split up this year, it would have been the Manic Street Preachers. The urgency and excitement of their early days has long passed, the plodding, bland nature of their most recent album would surely make Richey Edwards (wherever he may be) shudder in disgust.
Last year's solo ventures from both James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire would appear to have sealed the Manic's fate, but suprise surprise they've reappeared with their most impressive single since...well, since Motorcycle Emptiness. A huge, epic anthem, featuring Nina Persson of The Cardigans, it brings to mind all the attributes that made them so vital in the first place: passionate, energetic and damn exciting.
Even better, the bluster and pompous nature which blighted their more recent albums have disappeared, leaving a band refreshed and revitalised. If this is what a couple of solo projects do, then it should made compulsory for all bands. The most pleasantly surprising comeback of the year so far.
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