Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers

Make no mistake; the heyday of the Manic Street Preachers was fucking ace. But where exactly do the flamboyant Welsh trio fit circa 2007? Eighth album Send Away the Tigers smacks unashamedly of yesterday but it largely refuses to suffer for it. The fact that the uproarious title track and The Second Great Depression roll with the same thunder as Elvis Impersonator and A Design For Life respectively, falls only inches short of self-plagiarism. It's a return to old blueprints, and SATT does reclaim some of that liberated spirit for the Generation Terrorists, though Nicky Wire also braces a few tragic and macabre realities: Be it Richey, Guantanamo Bay, the massacre of the Russian royal family in the Bolshevik revolution, it's all here. "Nothing's finished, it just fades away," warns James Dean Bradfield during surprise punk rocker Imperial Bodybags. Dodgy singles aside, the strength in some of these songs should surely put that process on ice for the Manics.