Reissue CDs Weekly: Manic Street Preachers

“Over the horizon they come; the anniversaries; joyous, arduous, remorseless.” The opening words of Stuart Maconie’s fine, nuanced essay in the book accompanying this 20th-anniversary reissue of Manic Street Preachers’ fourth album acknowledge the inescapable fact that today’s heritage rock industry is indeed largely about anniversaries and their close cousin the reunion. Bands tour to air one of their past albums in track-by-track order.

Others reform to run through their catalogue of 20, 30 years ago. These living jukeboxes seek to revitalise music that was frozen in time, so kept fresh despite the all-too obvious fact that the years rolling by extract their various types of levy.

The new reissue of Manic Street Preachers' fourth album, titled Everything Must Go 20, has been accompanied by the band hitting the road to perform the album in full. They also did this a couple of years ago with their 1994 third album The Holy Bible. Yet Manic Street Preachers are not just about their respooling their own history. They make a new album every two or so years. The past, though, is a seductive place. It is also marketable.  

Everything Must Go is an important album for British pop and one which the band could have been assumed to not want to make. Their guitarist, lyricist and bared-soul Richey Edwards had disappeared in early 1995 after the release of The Holy Bible. With part of their beating heart excised, Manic Street Preachers could have packed it in. They chose not to and, despite the uncertainty, made the politicised yet accesible album which became their greatest commercial success.

The single which trailed it, “A Design For Life”, was expansive, grand, orchestrated and unwittingly locked into the guitar-pop zeitgeist which the then-current Britpop fad had fostered. Although eschewing the rawness of The Holy Bible, “A Design for Life” and much of the accompanying album was not new sonic territory and nodded back: their first album had featured the similarly sumptuous “Motorcycle Emptiness".

This new reissue enters a market which has already been addressed. A 10th-anniversary edition was released in 2006. Everything Must Go 20 includes no previously unreleased music and bulks the album out with B-sides, remixes and non-album tracks from the relevant period. No matter how fine the album itself, it is impossible not to wonder if it's a release that's strictly necessary.

Two editions are on offer. One is a stripped-down, two-disc package with a crisply remastered version of the album on Disc One (with no bonus tracks) and a DVD of their 24 May 1997 show at Manchester's Nynex Arena as Disc Two (extracts from this show featured on the 10th-anniversary version, and 14 tracks were previously released on VHS). The pricier edition is more lavish and sells for around £60: this is the version which matters. An LP-sized casebound book houses a vinyl repress of the new remaster, two CDs and two DVDs. The first CD includes the album and eight bonus tracks while the second has 17 non-album tracks. The first DVD is of the whole of the Nynex show and the second features a new documentary on the album and its circumstances, plus the promo videos for the album’s four singles. The book is well designed to reflect the album's original graphics, contains Maconie's essay and illustrations of related memorabilia, including lyrics in the band member's own hands (pictured above left, the lyrics for "A Design for Life"). It's a spiffy package.

Considering the lack of new material, interest will be centred on the new documentary, Freed From Memories. In it, the band stress that the album was already being worked towards – as its writing credits attest – before Edwards disappeared. They eloquently discuss their feelings about Britpop’s shortcomings and the realisation they had become co-opted as part of it: an awareness rammed home during a show where they supported Oasis. They are also very open while discussing Edwards. James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire are voluble, while the mostly and eerily statue-still Sean Moore offers little more than affirmation of what the others have said. For fans, this is a must-see.

And it’s existing fans who will no doubt have bought tickets for the still on-going Everything Must Go anniversary shows. Yet how many will be moved to buy this? How many remixes does anyone wish to hear? Is the album needed again? Approached as a programme for the tour – albeit an extremely snazzy one – Everything Must Go 20 makes most sense. But it’s a side issue for the ever-prolific band. They issued their last album in 2014 and will no doubt be working towards their next soon. Hopefully, Manic Street Preachers are still about forward motion rather than the demands of the heritage rock industry.