Manic Street Preachers: Life Becoming a Landslide

19 January 1994

"Suddenly the room is Wembley Stadium and rock 'n' roll is your salvation. Or something."

— Mark Sutherland

An elephant in the room I've mostly avoided up until now is just what a different magazine Smash Hits had evolved into by the early-to-mid nineties. I've already mentioned how the title of Single of the Fortnight had been replaced by Best New Single but this was one of the subtler changes. The longstanding Bitz section had been replaced by pages of celeb gossip, much of which wasn't even related to the world of pop.

Here is some of what comprised issue 395 of ver Hits:

✔ A teary-eyed editor-in-chief Mike Soutar giving his thoughts on the imminent relocation of the Hits offices from Carnaby St down to Oxford St. Bloody hell, they practically could've carried all the furniture down the road themselves. I bet he regrets chucking away all those Sham 69 and David Bowie reference books now.

✔ Taking the mickey out of actress Juliette Lewis for having hairy armpits. I'd be more inclined to dis her wooden acting myself.

✔ Rating Sting, Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart on how they fare as grandads of rock. Somehow, Mr Peacock Rod comes out with the lowest score making him less of a geezer than his younger compatriots. The Hits makes no mention of their trio single "All for Love" which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it used to be their mandate to keep viewers abreast on the hits of the day; on the other hand, the record is crap so it's no big loss.

✔ A photo of Axl Rose swimming with a dolphin which is taken from the video for some useless single from 1991's Use Your Illusion albums which came out in (checks notes) 1991.

✔ Gossip. Loads of it. A celeb gossip round-up from Leesa Daniels, Hollywood gossip courtesy of Sandro Monetti and Soap gossip from Marc Andrews because Australia. Not exactly a crapton of music gossip but the music coverage in general is lacking so much throughout this issue in general that I doubt many even noticed.

✔ More from Marc Andrews as he interviews a couple of the actors from Home & Away. They aren't Frank, Roo, Emma or Dag Dog so this pair means zilch to me. They even shoot down the idea of doing a Kylie & Jason style duet but I imagine the Aussie-soap-star-turned-pop-star pipeline had gone dry by this time anyway.

✔ Oh for the love of god, must I go on with this task that I chose to do??? Let's skip a bit.

✔ The by-now customary pull out songbook featuring lyrics from the following: Def Leppard, Therapy?, Tag Team, Soul Asylum, the aforementioned Sting/Bryan Adams/Rod Steward throat-ripping team-up, Dr Dre and RuPaul. The Leps aside, this about as 1994 as you can get — unless, of course, you wish to consider the good music that came out this year.

✔ Robbie Williams refuting many of the definitely baseless rumours that had spread about Take That. Someone ought to lie down with him on his bed and see what he thinks of them now.

✔ Alex Kadis follows Bad Boys Inc. on tour. Two observations here: (a) why the hell was 'Inc.' so common in the nineties? and (b) it was good of them to have been the "cheeriest men in pop" considering they played RC Cola to Take That and East 17's Coke and Pepsi respectively, wasn't it?

✔ Sylvia Patterson meets with Winona Ryder. Not a pop star but she once dated Johnny Depp...who also isn't a pop star.

✔ Reviews! Mark Sutherland "does" the singles! Age of Innocence and Mrs Doubtfire: I saw them both! Also, Tombstone and Son-in-Law, which I didn't see and probably wasn't even aware of.

✔ Letters. No Black Type and no correspondence of interest.

✔ Finally, a crossword puzzle and a short Q&A with Louise from Eternal. And a small poster for Wayne's World, another movie I've never seen. Because I've never thought Mike Myers was funny. In fact, I think he sucks.

All told, not much from the world of pop. A common complaint I've heard leveled at nineties' Smash Hits is that it went too far in the direction of "manufactured" groups like Take That and The Spice Girls but it seems more like they just wanted to be all things teen entertainment. Bad Boys Inc and Robbie Williams and Louise Nurding weren't everyone's thing but they were in the charts. But try telling that to Mark Sutherland, a rock 'n' roller who was a man out of time.

Whether by design or by chance, this fourth single dressed up as an E.P. (with it by now the dominant format, virtually every CD single was in effect an extended play) cleverly capped off their early hard rock indie sound while guiding listeners in the direction of the bleak, skeletal work that would appear on their pivotal third album The Holy Bible near the end of 1994. Life Becoming a Landslide's second track "Comfort Comes" isn't up to much but it does suggest that their days of sloganeering might be finally drawing to a close, even if they weren't quite done with their tired use of alliteration. In addition, while third track "Are Mothers Saints" does worringly hint at the Welsh lads going through a Red Hot Chili Peppers phase, it's more considered and philosophical lyrics also point the way forward.

But the title cut has next to nothing going for it. Just another Manic Street Preachers song that sounds just like the one that came before it. While their song titles may have once been a strength — just as they would as they awkwardly moved into their trio years near the end of the decade — by now they had become a signpost for why it's best to avoid them at all costs. "Life Becoming a Landslide": why would I ever need to give it a listen when I already know exactly how it's going to sound?

The Manics always seemed like a band who desperately wished to not to make the mistakes of the groups that came with them, particularly The Clash. Some critics fans have knocked Give 'Em Enough Rope for been far too polished and this was about when there were worries that the so-called 'only band that mattered' were going to sell out. Richey Edwards, James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore were well aware of this and made a point that they would never fall victim to the pop/rock machine. Their second album was called Gold Against the Soul for god's sake. Their mostly brilliant first album was then followed by a tepid second release which sounded like they were already running out of material. They had to push on and a good thing too since it resulted in three albums on the bounce at their creative peak — The Holy Bible, Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours.

With four Singles of the Fortnight/Best New Singles to their credit from just their first two albums, Manic Street Preachers have been well represented in blog. And there may very well be more to come. "A Design for Life", "Kevin Carter", "If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next" and "The Everlasting" could all be coming in the months and years ahead (well, except for the fact that I know that at least two of them won't be featured but why spoil the surprise, eh?) Pet Shop Boys and, I suppose, Scritti Politti aside, I tend to get sick of groups who pop up on here this many times and ver Manics are no exception. But in this instance, I'm quite sure I would've been mildly fed up with them at the time as well. All that shouting, all that seriousness, all those predictable tunes. I wasn't about to be pretending it was Wembley Stadium with my air guitar while listening to their stuff; doing Hollywood gossip column for a once-great pop mag doesn't even seem so foul by comparison.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Charlatans: "Can't Get Out of Bed"

In addition to the Manics, Sutherland also approves of the latest from Inspiral Carpets (they were still around in '94?), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Therapy? and The Orb — so you might say he digs his indie. Pop and hip hop acts don't do so well but he also isn't terribly fond of new releases from Soul Asylum and The Charlatans, so I guess not all guitar bands were to his taste. I've always kind of liked Northwich's favorite sons but I will admit that the country-ish "Can't Get Out of Bed" isn't one of their stronger efforts. It took them a long time to shake off the overstated claims that they were just inferior Stone Roses clones but they were beginning to find their way. The fact that ace organist Rob Collins was coming to the end of a spell in prison couldn't have helped their progress. A firm fan favourite but since when was a group's cult following any kind of authority? Like the Manics, they'd soon be back and better than ever.

River City People: "(What's Wrong with) Dreaming?"

5 September 1990

"River City People's dodgy hippie period lasted just one record and they're now going to set about the task of being a great pop group."

— Mark Frith

Nashville. Music City. Home of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry and Hee Haw. Home as well to thousands of singer-songwriters, though you'd be hard pressed to find many who were actually born there as well. It is said to be the fastest growing city in the United States and no doubt the bulk of them are gainfully employed in the music business — or they really hope to be.

British music types tend to relocate to either New York or Los Angeles, with a handful migrating back-and-forth between the two. Nashville hasn't taken in a lot of stars from the other side of the Atlantic, Peter Frampton and Robyn Hitchcock being among the notable exceptions, but one who must have seemed destined to wind up there was Siobhan Maher, singer of Liverpool's River City People.

It's worth mentioning where they came from originally because you'd never know it looking at them. Maher is striking with her ocean blue eyes and long, wavy hair but she looks more like a "granola" who hangs out in hip Greenwich Village coffee houses or an associate professor of anthropology at a liberal Colorado university than a Scouse popstrel. Guitarist Tim Speed and bassist Dave Snell both have a distinctly American look to them too, in their case as members of a Boston-area group who I've never heard but who are said to be "deeply influential". Only drummer Paul Speed (Tim's brother) looks like he could handle himself among a pack of football hooligans.

More importantly, River City People sound like they have Americana in their blood. If they'd been from Scotland instead of Merseyside this wouldn't be quite so surprising. Obviously sounding American is as old as British pop itself but to do so while ridding oneself of anything remotely old world is another matter indeed. They looked American and sounded American to the core so was it any wonder at least one of them ended up settling in perhaps the most American of cities?

"(What's Wrong with) Dreaming?" — more like "(What's Wrong with Those) Parentheses?", am I right? — is a rare country-ish number on this blog. Previously, we've come across Rachel Sweet ("I Go to Pieces"), Lone Justice ("Ways to Be Wicked") and The Long Ryders ("Looking for Lewis and Clark"). Not a bad selection, the latter two being particularly good. All three, however, represent Americans trying to buck the system of mainstream country music; this is a bunch of Brits going out of their way to embrace it. I know which side I'd take on that one.

Mark Frith (yet another relative newcomer to ver Hits) looks at River City People as a potentially "great pop group" and doesn't detect any trace of outlaw music in "Dreaming". This may be down to the way UK guitar rock had become much more of a downhome concern, what with acts like Deacon Blue, Del Amitri, Fairground Attraction and Texas all having had success over the previous two years. And Frith is probably more correct than he knows: Garth Brooks was on the ascent in the US in 1990 spelling a boom period of mainstream urban country music that owed at least as much to Andy Williams as it did to Hank Williams. As some within British rock embraced country, American country embraced the pop crossover.

I'm not overly crazy about "Dreaming?" but I will say that it's a marked improvement on their dreadful cover of The Mamas & The Papas' sixties classic "California Dreamin'" which somehow gave them a Top 20 hit earlier that summer. (Yes, someone had the bright idea of releasing a song about how all the "leaves are brown and the sky is grey" and how they went out for a walk on a "winter's day" in June) This is the brief "dodgy" hippie period that Frith is referring to in his review. I was going to write about how they did The Byrds-style 'acid-rock hippie to country purist' transition in record time but for the fact that "Dreaming?" had initially been recorded and released well before their pointless version of "California Dreamin'" so they probably always had country in their blood all along. Hippies? These people??

There's no denying that Maher has a splendid voice that would no doubt come in handy when she finally relocated to Music City. It was an environment that probably suited her better anyway. It would have allowed her to dive right in to country music while still letting her pursue that pop stuff that Frith is concerned about. As for this, I'll take a pass (as did most people considering it only got to number forty). I, too, love pop that makes me feel good about the world, I just don't get any trace of that feeling here. There are songwriters all over the world who better capture it; I daresay there are even quite a few of them in Nashville.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Charlatans: "Then"

Groups like The Charlatans didn't seem overly promising back in Madchester's heyday. The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays looked to be two of the biggest bands on Earth but they both rapidly fell apart leaving the also-rans especially vulnerable. You'd never know that Tim Burgess and his band of guys whose last names may or may not have been Collins would have been the one baggy act with a future, particularly since "Then" is such a rum follow-up to their memorable breakthrough hit "The Only One I Know". Then again, they were always a frustratingly inconsistent group, always counted upon to follow a total banger with something plodding and filled with Burgess' incomprehensible lyrics. Good they were getting into the swing of having an all-over-the-place discography at such an early stage though.