More about: Manic Street Preachers
The band will be supporting Manics on their upcoming UK tour
On the one hand, you've got one of the greatest bands of all time celebrating one of the finest albums of their generation with Manic Street Preachers playing Everything Must Go in full. But show up a little earlier, and you're in for one hell of a treat - as the band have invited Editors on tour to support them.
Last year saw Editors hit their career-high with the release of their crowning achievement, their glorious fifth album, In Dream. For over a decade now, they've dropped one impeccable release after another, and remain one of most arresting live acts you could hope to see. So how's that for value for your ticket money?
To celebrate this immaculate union, we asked Editors to pick their top 10 favourite Manics songs of all time. Check them out below.
"As we prepare go out on the Everything Must Go 20th anniversary tour, it's been good to revisit some of our favourite Manic Street Preachers songs and to wonder if we will get to see them being performed live later this week," the band tells Gigwise. "They have a wealth of great singles especially, and we admire the way they can write songs with great depth and social meaning, but present them as stand up pop songs. Wrapping a dark song up in this way, and getting it onto the radio, is something that has always interested our band, though we have been far less direct about any political and personal meanings behind our tunes.
"The Manics have not settled upon a particular sound and have created some varied albums over their career so far. The ambition to move from one style to another, to build a long term career by trying to better themselves as songwriters is one to be admired. They may not seem to be the closest link in the chain to our band musically, but I have certainly been influenced by their blend of electronic beats and samples with aggressive rock guitars and drums."
Editors added: "We have been lucky to play some really important support tours at key times in our career. Franz Ferdinand invited us out in 2005 when we had just released our debut album, and got us playing to a vast new audience. We opened up for REM a few years later and learnt a huge amount about the responsibilities of being in a successful band and what it's like to play on a big stage. We are similarly delighted to be invited along on what should be a celebratory tour for one of Britain's most loved bands, Manic Street Preachers."
As well as festival appearances at Y Not and Victorious this summer, Editors will be supporting Manic Street Preachers on their upcoming tour. Full dates are below. For tickets and information, visit here.
Manic Street Preachers will play:
13 May LIVERPOOL, Echo Arena
14 May BIRMINGHAM, Genting Arena
16/17 May LONDON, Royal Albert Hall
20 May LEEDS, First Direct Arena
21 May GLASGOW, The SSE Hydro
Check out Editors' Gigwise takeover below:
We talk to the band about sadness, returning from the brink and moving on
Get under the skin as the band talk us through their best album to date
From Radiohead and REM to Nils Frahm and Jon Hopkins - what do Editors listen to?
The band talk us through playing live and reflect on their 2005 debut, and all that's changed since
12. 'Australia': Being a staple of their sets for many years, 'Australia' became a radio smash for the Manics and another in a long line of ultimate festival anthems. You may also remember it soundtracking Renford Rejects. Glorious and euphoric as it may be, it just feels a little shallow in comparison to depth of the rest of EMG. There's just not as much to cling to as say, 'Interiors'.
11. 'Further Away': The perfect example of the Manics' ability to take Autumnal loneliness and turn it into a miserable but rousing arena anthem. An ode to missing Richey perhaps, and it may be a great bubble of pop - however it lacks the edge of the album's countless peaks.
10. 'Removeables': A searing and brooding number made up of Edwards' existential lyrics, this piece of music torn inside out could have easily sat on The Holy Bible, but has just enough bounce to fit on EMG. In truth, a brilliant and underrated forgotten classic.
9. 'Kevin Carter': After the twisted horror of The Holy Bible, 'Kevin Carter' probably marks the most surprising sonic departure for the Manics - leaning towards a hispanic guitar sound and featuring the first of drummer Sean Moore's trumpet solos. Edwards famously showed dismay towards the sound of the track when Bradfield played it to him the night before he disappears, but the truth is you'd struggle to find a finer song about the downward spiral of shame of a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer - especially one that hit the top 10.
8. 'Interiors (Song For Willem De Kooning)': Like every great Manics song, a Trojan Horse hiding horse of culture, art and existentialism hidden inside true pop greatness. This soaring number references the abstract expressionist De Kooning as a prism for their own troubles, finding a new means of looking at the world to make sense of all the pain we see. 'Future' is a big, scary word after all.
7. 'Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky': One of Edwards' greatest left behind lyrics, the sweet string-laden nature of this number may seem at odds with the lryics' telling of the torture of animals held in captivity, but it ultimately works to conjure up the dream of escapism - something we imagine that Edwards had been longing for. It's also one of Bradfield's finest vocals.
6. 'Enola/Alone': Quite simply, probably the greatest Manics single that never was - an elegiac rush of Brit-rock genius.
5. 'Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier': Rivalling 'Yes' for the greatest album opener the Manics have produced, this sky-reaching treasure is an oh-so-Manics sideways look at the adoption of cheap American culture at the most unlikely of places. One of the peaks of the album comes as Bradfield howls "the future's dead fundamentally, it's so fucking funny, it's absurd" before one hell of a guitar solo.
4. 'Everything Must Go': Arguably the most self-referential and brutally-honest that the band have been, James, Nicky and Sean shed their skin in an attempt to form a new order, charging fearfully into the horizon.
3. 'The Girl Who Wanted To Be God': A wash of catharsis on on this utterly triumphant Wire/Edwards lyrical collaboration again spits out Sylvia Plath - but its true meaning has remained a mystery to fans for two decades. Regardless, its an utterly joyful listen amid lyrics of striving for greatness through hopelessness.
2. 'A Design For Life': Unfortunately taken at face value by many new listeners and confused Britpop-followers back in the 90s due that 'we don't talk about love, we just want to get drunk' line, this is the track that saved the Manics. Wire handed Bradfield a sheet of lyrics about civic pride and the working classes using knowledge to smash through any glass ceiling, it came to fruition when the Manics became a chart-dominating force of greatness.
1. 'No Surface All Feeling': The elegiac grace, the heavenly guitars, the piercing drums, the masterful lyrics - this closer is all that made the Manics so essential during this period. The crisp Smashing Pumpkins-esque riff sees in another typically Manics song of defiance - noting the weight of the past, but having no choice but to face the future: "What's the point in always looking back / when all you see is more and more junk". The closing section also features one of the only recorded guitar parts of Edwards. A heartbreaking tribute.
More about: Manic Street Preachers
Photo: WENN
