Album review: Manic Street Preachers, Rewind The Film (Columbia)

The first barrel of a projected two-stage broadside, Rewind the Film finds the Manics grasping the nettle of age, defeat and alienation with the same partisan persistence that marked their tyro ragings, albeit tempered with the contemplative spirit of maturity. It's unlike any other Manics album in its emphasis on acoustic modes, crepuscular tones and reflective melodies, but there's a familiar sting of truth in lines like “There is too much heartbreak in the nothing of the new”. Tinted with horns, celesta, organ and strings – and a lovely French horn solo from Sean Moore on the middle-age moan “Builder of Routines” – it reveals a broader musical and emotional palette than they've exposed before.

Download: Show Me the Wonder; Rewind the Film; Builder of Routines; Anthem for a Lost Cause; Running Out of Fantasy