Three salvos from a Manic’s magazine, by Keith Cameron.

Manic Street Preachers ★★★★ (COLUMBIA, 1992)

Yes it’s overlong, and some songs had already been better represented elsewhere, but the debut Manics album offered an essential inventory of the band’s rock’n’roll culturecide. The Wire/Edwards lyric writing partnership was perhaps at its symbiotic best, while the diamond-tipped James Dean Bradfield riff mine repeatedly struck pure gold: no one else has ever written a song quite like Motorcycle Emptiness, the doomed youth anthem to end them all.

Manic Street Preachers ★★★★

THE FIRST ONE!

After Everything Must Go’s heroic relaunch of the bereaved trio, commercial vindication: a chart-topping album, anchored by glacially bleak songs inspired by Welsh poet R.S. Thomas, heralded by If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next. 2018’s reissue belatedly conferred album status on B-side Prologue To History, a delirious blast of peak Wire, referencing politician Neil Kinnock, rugby legend Phil Bennett, Shaun Ryder and a certain “poet who can’t play guitar”.

THE SOLO ONE!

Nicky Wire ★★★ (RED INK, 2006)

Those who took exception to his lead vocal debut on Know Your Enemy’s Wattsville Blues most likely baulked at an entire album showcasing Wire’s vision of a Dalek fronting The Velvet Underground. Yet I Killed The Zeitgeist was less wilful grouch, more unmediated lost soul, a succession of crumpled dispatches from his sullen Welsh heart, with naive melodies to spare and a genuine chiller in the skeletal Everything Fades: “Failure can be good for the soul.”