- Record Label: Columbia
- Release Date: Sep 21, 2010
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Oct 22, 2010It sounds like a Manic Street Preachers album, which alone renders it still better than all of the similar arena rock you can name.
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For those Manics fans whose bearing on the band is centred by a Britpop firmament, rather than The Holy Bible, this record will prove a joy. It's jolly, but jolly good.
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There will be plenty of people who opt to be snobby about the fact that this record is so commercial, so polished and so brazen, but those people are all, to a man, idiots. If you can't love these songs, you are incapable of experiencing joy itself.
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The Manics' 10th offensive is a more playful beast than that--poignant, joyful and above all really, really loud.
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Q MagazineStill raging, not drowning, their flame burns unfashionably on. [Oct 2010, p.110]
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Complaining that they occasionally overegg the pudding seems a bit like complaining that the Swedish House Mafia hail from Sweden and persist in making house music. This is what the Manic Street Preachers do. As it plays, you're struck by the fact that no one else does anything like it: reason enough for the Manic Street Preachers' continued existence.
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While I wouldn't say that Postcards From a Young Man is quite the late-career masterstroke Journal For Plague Lovers was, it is still a product of a re-energized band. Whether or not it actually garners them the hits and mass audience they're aiming for (and at least in Britain, it seems inconceivable that it won't), they've managed to make an inviting, populist album that deserves the attention.
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Kerrang!This is a terrific album, a rich, sweeping 12-song set that features more potential hit singles than you can swing a pickaxe at. [18 Sep 2010, p.57]
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Granted, it is serious-minded fun with ambition, but with Manic Street Preachers you take fun whenever you can get it, and they've never sounded as ebullient as they do here.
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UncutTaking its musical cues from Dennis Wilson and Echo And The Bunnymen, the band remain human underneath the strum and bang and always make sure that, in among the fire and thunder, there are songs, and emotion and, as ever, extraordinary lyrics. [Oct 2010, p.93]
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Overall, Postcards finds Manic Street Preachers at the top of their game, even 22 years after their first single. It's not for everyone--though pop radio will undoubtedly spin several of these tracks hourly for the foreseeable future--but longtime Manics fans will likely find plenty to love in this polished, grandiose "last attempt at mass communication" from an enigmatic rock 'n' roll institution.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 17
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Mixed: 3 out of 17
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Negative: 0 out of 17
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Mar 8, 2023
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Apr 19, 2011
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Oct 25, 2010This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.