(Columbia/Sony)The Manics channel Benny and Björn in an album of mostly sparkling songcraft
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.