Music

The claim made by the title is so hilariously boastful and Pythonesque that you assume heavy irony is in play. Then you remember: those ‘generation terrorists’ Manic Street Preachers didn’t do irony. They were famously ‘4 Real’.

They were also a bafflingly popular, pub-rock arena quartet touting a mix of bloated balladry and blustery rock epics, all bellowed by a bloke who makes a calving water buffalo sound like Maria Callas. They reduced situationism and agit-punk to a bunch of fatuous slogans, and banged on about Rimbaud as if no one else had ever read a book, drawing slavish fans who fancied themselves as misunderstand ‘outsiders’, but who were simply unlucky enough to have had the clod-hopping Manics provide them with their first Big Rock Experience. The band generously took their music to Cuba – poor Cuba, of course, having no music of its own. Truly, the Manics sucked.

So badly, in fact, that one of them ran away.

News then, of the solo debut by their bass player Nicky Wire – Dyson endorser and former enthusiastic wearer of leopard-print frocks  – might inspire great excitement in the Manics’ camp, but summon dread in any other half sane being. Given that James Dean Bradfield played to epic-rock type on his recent solo LP, that might have left Wire all washed up with no place to go, but ‘I Killed The Zeitgeist’ is a surprisingly creditable effort that sees him striking out in fairly unlikely directions. Using electric and acoustic guitars as a post-punk base, he adds chiming, Byrds-like notes (in ‘You Will Always Be My Home’), the Mary Chain’s fuzz-pop (‘Stab Yr Heart’), Big Star’s autumnal chug (‘Withdraw Retreat’) and suggests a sneaky affection for Crowded House (‘The Shining Path’). ‘So Much for The Future’ (think The Pogues covering ‘My Way’) and brooding, FX-drenched closer ‘Everything Fades’ are especially surprising for a  Manic, so extra points there. Spare us, though – please, God –  from a solo outing by the drummer.