Track Listing

1. Peeled Apples
2. Jackie Collins Existential Question Time
3. Me And Stephen Hawking
4. This Joke Sport Severed
5. Journal For Plague Lovers
6. She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach
7. Facing Page: Top Left
8. Marlon J.D.
9. Doors Closing Slowly
10. All Is Vanity
11. Pretension/Repulsion
12. Virginia State Epileptic Colony
13. William's Last Words

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #582 in Music
• Released on: 2009-05-18
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Never shy of talking history, Manic Street Preachers have tackled everything from fellow Welshman Dylan Thomas to World War Two concentration camps in their two-decade history. Journal For Plague Lovers, however, sees the Manics tackling a past even closer to home: their own. With a sleeve painted by artist Jenny Saville and words culled from the notebooks of Richey Edwards, the band’s former lyricist and guitarist who apparently disappeared into the fog back in 1995, Journal For Plague Lovers consciously harks back to the group’s excellently caustic 1994 album The Holy Bible. Journal For Plague Lovers is a softer album than that, one that perhaps imagines The Holy Bible’s razor edges through a sepia filter. But a recording job by Steve Albini leaves songs like "Peeled Apples" and "She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach" feeling satisfyingly raw and there remains something undeniably thrilling about the pairing of James Dean Bradfield’s vocal--gruff, passionate--and the strange, cryptic imagery conjured up by Edwards’ lyrics: "This beauty a dipping neophobia", he choruses, soulfully on "Facing Page: Top Left", and you remember what a strange, special band the Manics can be when they put their minds to it. ––Louis Pattison

CD Description

Manic Street Preachers return with their ninth studio album, Journal For Plague Lovers. The album follows the hugely successful and critically acclaimed 2007 release Send Away The Tigers, and the induction of the band into the NME’s Hall Of Fame with their naming as the "NME Godlike Genius" for 2008. Produced by Steve Albini and recorded live at Rockfield Studios in Wales during the Winter of 2008, the album features lyrics left behind by former guitarist Richey Edwards across all 13 new tracks. An original piece of Jenny Saville’s art is the cover of Journal for Plague Lovers, whose painting graced the cover of 1994’s ‘The Holy Bible’. Musically the band draw on their classic Holy Bible sound with elements of Nirvana’s In Utero, as well as a delicate, beautiful acoustic side.