(Columbia/Sony)The Manics channel Benny and Björn in an album of mostly sparkling songcraft
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Any Abba fans unable to wait until November to hear the new album from the 1970s’ best pop band could do worse than give the Manic Street Preachers’ 14th LP a listen. For the first time, they have written songs on piano instead of guitar, and the result is an artfully realised exercise in melancholic, grown-up pop with textures that owe much to the Swedes’ later work. It’s also a welcome return to form, after 2018’s water-treading Resistance Is Futile.
Lead single Orwellian sets lyrics about the misappropriation of language for political ends to galloping Waterloo piano lines; The Secret He Had Missed, about sibling artists Gwen and Augustus John, finds James Dean Bradfield duetting with Julia Cumming as the backing refracts Benny and Björn’s pop nous through a soft-rock prism, with a guitar motif straight from Don’t Stop Believin’ thrown in as a bonus. Majestic opener Snowing in Sapporo, meanwhile, is more familiar fare, the Manics at their most anthemic.