One song closer to covering them as often as we cover Drake…

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[5.20]

Crystal Leww: Somehow the Manics grew up and became so old-fashioned that even my mom wouldn’t listen to this.
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Brad Shoup: The second-gen Manics (who have been a unit for nearly twice as long as the first incarnation!) have always been an idea-first band. They don’t got singing, they don’t got hooks, they just rock in a glammish, Triple J Hottest 100 way. They’ve got the catch in James Dean Bradfield’s roar. The surprise in his rise gets a workout here, in this slightly scuffed AM Gold piece. To ask them to go groove-first would ask for some kind of betrayal, I guess, so this is as good as it gets.
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Anthony Easton: I never find inspirational work inspirational, and the self-awareness of Britpop only works when it’s constructed either with swagger or irony (or if we’re really lucky, both). This has neither of those things. It seems needless to point out the problems of a band that mostly lives on nostalgia, nervously beavering against nostalgia. 
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Every few years, theManics reappear with one song to smack me in the face, as though to say oh you forgot about us? There’s a greatchance that much of this is in James Dean Bradfield’s voice, a powerfulinstrument with plenty of brio but little unnecessary bluster, effortlessly turninglyricist Nicky Wire’s wordy dispatches into something catchy. The chorus of”Show Me the Wonder” is a buoyant thing, slowly coaxing wide smiles asBradfield scans the universe, accompanied on his journey by effervescent horns.It’s all performed in a way that doesn’t sound forced or corny, acting more asa riposte to world-weariness than clueless glad-handing: “is it just too much to ask to believe ineverything?”
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W.B. Swygart: The Manics are like cryptic crosswords for me, codes I never cracked; the feeling there’s an instruction manual no-one ever gave me, like if I knew how to solder part C to part F it’d work wonderfully, and I’d actually be happier for it, it’d be a perfect fit if I could just figure out where my arms are meant to go. I’ve gotten close, had glimpses, epiphanies a few times: “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough“, for instance. I’m not sure I could trust anyone who didn’t find something to feel in “Everything Must Go“. Lost in the world Big Rock created, trying to find the way to fight back, to build something for themselves; uncomfortable in their own skin, even less comfortable in everyone else’s. James Dean Bradfield’s calloused rasp is no problem when you’re 22, but when you get fed up of trying to scare people, it starts to hurt. “Show Me the Wonder” fits into the story because it sounds like the Mavericks. Less chirpy, brass more Tredegar than Tijuana, but still a heck of a lot closer than you’d have imagined they’d ever get. It’s a confusing thing, a song that seems to embrace slippers and armchairs but doesn’t want you thinking it’s happy about that. The ageing process hasn’t got any less awkward, as they still struggle to work out who the men they want to be actually are, and decide to turn to the past, to the roots; to the closest thing they can call home. They want their hatred to be wrong, they just want to fucking sit down for a second, for goodness’ sake, but they can’t trust the world enough to touch the furniture. “Is heaven a place where nothing ever happens?” Not Bradfield’s words — not Wire’s either — but the sharpest point here. They want peace at last. But their peace, not someone else’s. And they can’t tell now if they’ll ever get it. Or what it is. Life would be easier if they could let go. Life would be an awful lot easier if the Manics were just another band that I could just ignore, just shove under the bed, leave them to fade to beige. But they’re bloody not. And it gets to me. (Score this low cos the song’s not that great, and looks even less great next to the single that preceded it. There’s a lot to be said for Richard Hawley; somewhere else, though.)
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Every year I like a couple of trad rock songs. This is making a strong push to be one of this year’s.
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Scott Mildenhall: It might be lazy to “quip” that this is the sound of a band with only newspaper cuttings of their glory days for comfort, but then it’s not exactly all that inspired itself, and the line about measuring nostalgia pretty much backs it up. All they have otherwise are some quasi-religious cryptograms, vague gestures towards Cymreig solidarity and an unconvincing jauntiness. Why they require yet more wonder after seeing “the birthplace of the universe” (whatever that means) and “miracles happen in reverse” (is that positive?) is perplexing, but judging by this, it might be necessary.
[4]

Will Adams: Motown spiritualism in the same vein as Gotye’s “I Feel Better.” It’s not as polished, especially when the chorus begins to show its clutter, but damn if it isn’t endearing.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Every time I re-encounter Manic Street Preachers I think “I don’t remember them being this pretty,” then I look up their old stuff and realize that yes, they were in fact almost this pretty. (Who am I even confusing them with? Bad Religion?) The horns and brass in this strike me as too consciously revivalist among too many conscious revivalists, but who knows what I’ll think later.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The horns attempt to show the wonder, but when your singer sounds like Elvis Costello and cites a David Byrne lyric, the only wonder is why fans thought this band could cross over in Yankland.
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