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Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers Everywhere you look, people seem to be calling Send Away the Tigers a return to form for the Welsh trio. Having been, and remaining a huge fan of the electro-pop/rock of 2004s Lifeblood (if not Know Your Enemy), I’m not really able to see it in that same light. But it’s definitely a return to rock (even punk rock), and undeniably a return to the more exuberant playing style that their younger selves wore on their proud sleeves. Whether it’s in the guitar solos or the less overtly political lyrics, the Manics seem to have set themselves free from something. Possibly expectation.
Presumably with both James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire releasing solo albums in 2006, joining forces again meant they could fully focus on the group sound without being trapped by their own creative agendas. And Sean Moore has also contributed more to this album musically.
The deceptively soft organ chords that herald the beginning of the album on the title track almost immediately give way to an aggressive lead guitar, and Bradfield’s vocal is fairly rough and ready, with lyrics emerging at a pace that puts it somewhere close to rap. The sending away the tigers line refers to the decision to release the zoo animals when the Allies invaded Iraq, which Wire himself describes as “a misguided idea of liberation”. It’s also a phrase that Tony Hancock used to describe his reason for drinking, something which he was doing to excess when he fired his writers, Galton and Simpson.
So for Wire the album title, and title track, is about being haunted by, and remembered for a mistake. By extension, it’s about Blair forever being tied to Iraq, and there’s a further parallel with their own The Love of Richard Nixon from the Lifeblood album, which told of his ‘war on cancer’ and important work on Chinese relations being forgotten in the light of Watergate. Whether the Manics feel that they’re going to be remembered for their weaker material it’s hard to say, but there’s certainly a sense that they’re trying to be true to their younger selves. It’s no accident that this opener sounds more like the Manics of old than we’ve heard for a long time.
Then as if to reinforce that feeling, second track Underdogs is devoted to the fans who’ve stuck with them since the beginning; “This one’s for the freaks; the beaten down and crushed; the shy and withdrawn; or just out of touch”. A thunderous drum roll greets the chorus and you start to wonder if they’ve lost all their synths. But the main thing is they’ve found a connection with that early energy; the very thing that attracted such devotion from fans in the first instance. And of course the implication is that they’re freaks themselves; it’s a badge of honour rather than something to be ashamed of.
With a catchy hook that borders on the annoying thanks to its repetitiveness, first true single Your Love Alone is Not Enough is deceptively light at first listen. Still, the lyrics clearly touch upon darker themes, Richey Edwards possibly being one of them; “But your love alone won’t save the world. You knew the secret of the universe; despite it all you made it worse; it left you lonely it left you cursed.” The simplicity of the song structure notwithstanding, it’s undeniable that Nina Persson (of Cardigans fame) and James Dean Bradfield sound great in duet. Is it great enough to withstand dozens of listens? Possibly not, but it was an obvious single choice, and with references to earlier material (“You stole the sun straight from my heart”) again we see the Manics are in a reflective mood.
Send Away the Tigers is an extremely short record, clocking up a mere 35 minutes. This makes the song (and lyrical) choices doubly interesting when you consider that around 30 were written in total. “Baby what have you done to your hair?” takes you by surprise when you first hear it in Autumn Song, but not as much as when “to your hair, to your hair, to your hair” rises in crescendo to the chorus. Wire felt that perhaps the Manics needed to reveal their lighter side, but in this case most will be laughing at them rather than with. “I’m Just a Patsy” has a similar effect, especially when Wire (presumably) speaks the line. Bradfield does his best to make the lyrics ring true, and overall the music sounds great, to the point where you wish that almost any other lyrics had been used. Furthermore, we get a cover of Lennon’s Working Class Hero instead of another new song; another mystifying choice.
Of course the politics are back too - most noticeably in Imperial Bodybags and Rendition (‘extraordinary rendition’ being the bizarre phrase the CIA use to describe flying a suspect somewhere to be interrogated). They’re both strong songs, even if slightly predictable. As with any other Manics record, there’s a lot of lyrical content to be investigated if you’re that way inclined, but more importantly, they still know how to conjure up a compelling series of songs.
In many senses, ‘Tigers’ never lets up. There’s nothing you could really call a ballad on here, and Indian Summer stands out in particular as a song for the Manic canon. Nonetheless, it’s hard to shake the feeling that for all the rocking out, they’re also looking backwards, trying to recapture something from the distant past. Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day trying to position himself in the snow the exact same way he did the night before; something unquantifiable is missing. It’s a curious kind of freedom that they’ve found themselves. And yet, and yet…when they’re this full of energy, it’s very hard not to enjoy basking in the glow yourself.
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