David Evans’ 33⅓ book on the Manics’ masterpiece is a reminder of the album’s strength as a recurring galvanising force, argues Claire Biddles
In the 25 years since its deadpan summertime release in August 1994, Manic Street Preachers’ third album The Holy Bible has influenced a huge amount of writing, art and intellectual consideration. It’s fitting that an album so densely-packed with historical, artistic and literary references should have turned, over time, into a catalyst for more. Many of these responses have been literary: Simon Price’s superb biography of the band, Everything, contains extensive writing on the album and its themes of abuse, mental illness, and the mirrored breakdowns of personal and political life. In 2017, Larissa Wodtke, Rhian E. Jones and Daniel Lukes released Triptych, a thoughtful collection of three critical “studies” of the album. The band themselves recognised the importance of written responses to the album: The 20th anniversary release of the album contains essays by Keith Cameron.
The promise of a 33⅓ edition on the Manics’ masterpiece is an enticing one, then. Although the series is often known for its unorthodox readings of beloved records, music critic David Evans has chosen a more straightforward approach; telling the story of the recording of the album, providing analysis of its lyrics and themes, and asking questions of its aftermath – in both wider cultural contexts and the lives and career of the band. The book “presumes no prior knowledge”, which leads to some well-worn storytelling for seasoned Manics fans, especially those who have read Price’s biography – but ultimately this approach makes for a well-rounded, comprehensive and smart document of the album, its contexts and legacy.
Evans begins by contextualising the album in the wider musical landscape of the arse-end of baggy and the new age of The Lad. The Manics’ brash glam-punk-throwback looks and bookish introspection stuck out in the early 90s, and came to a head in the initial stirs of Britpop: when Noel Gallagher was bragging that he had never read a book, lyricist Richey Edwards was namechecking Sylvia Plath and Harold Pinter on “Faster”, The Holy Bible’s first single. Evans also provides a political context: linking the band’s inherently working class Welsh creativity with the miners’ strike that galvanised them, and the mid-90s rise of New Labour, and how its sheen of false hope jarred with the band’s mindset. “In this jovial atmosphere,” Evans writes, “Manic Street Preachers made an album that elevated deep thought to something like a moral imperative.”
Evans frames his discussion around two ostensibly conflicting – and particularly Welsh – states: hiraeth and hwyl. These twin states – translating to homesick, nostalgic longing for the past and driving, motivating hopefulness – describe the Manics’ post-1995 work particularly well, but it’s more tricky to apply them to the dark complexities of The Holy Bible. Though initially sketchy (the album is described as containing “life-affirming tunes”, which doesn’t quite sit right), Evans convincingly breaks down his attribution: reframing the album’s hwyl as the joy it takes in its own intelligence and assertion. Referring to the multi-layered references and honed cleverness of “P.C.P.”, Evans writes: “Richey is delivering a serious message, but there’s an element of glee in these lines. Like a preacher savouring the smooth vowels and hissing fricatives of his own oratory, he’s showing off, enjoying himself.”
This particular joy is referenced again when discussing the textual fan production that came after the album; specifically in the autonomous fan community that strengthened in the wake of Richey’s disappearance in February 1995. Evans cites a number of artists and writers that were directly inspired by the Manics – Phonogram’s Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, visual artist Jeremy Deller, and writers Rachel Trezise and Ever Dundas – and argues, correctly, for the band’s enormous effect on not just music but literature, fine art and academia. Talking about the influence of The Holy Bible on their work, novelist Dundas says, “To find this alternative Bible opened up a new world, a new way of being. Weirdly, it gave me hope and ambition.” The spirit of the album prompting a cultural transfer of hwyl.
Evans concludes the book with his own journey to Manics fandom: endearingly, via a Q magazine compilation CD in the mid-90s, during the band’s post-Everything Must Go boom years. It’s a familiar story, and supports Evans’ argument for The Holy Bible as an important historical touchstone: not just significantly revisited by the band via tours and reissues, but by generations of fans discovering it for the first time. More than anything, Evans’ book is a reminder of the album’s strength as a recurring galvanising force. Most Manics fans can trace its influence as a way of looking at the world in their own lives and work: a model for thinking, a design for life.
Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible by David Evans is published by Bloomsbury Academic as part of the 33⅓ series.
