Manic Street Preachers – Rosebud

With a crackly, muffled intro, like a mysterious demo cassette found in a dusty shoe box clicking into motion on a vintage tape deck, ‘Rosebud’ is the sound of Manic Street Preachers at their claustrophobically gritty greatest. The previously unreleased track from 2001 has been chosen as the launch single for the 20^th anniversary (well 21^st anniversary really) re-release of their sixth album ‘Know Your Enemy’ and to think a song of this calibre has been hoarded away unheard for two decades is pure sacrilege.

After the band’s mainstream success with 1998’s ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’ the Manics went undercover for a while to regroup, on their return deciding to eschew the widescreen, string-soaked ballads that had made them super-famous and embrace their C-86 indie and spiky punk roots like they’d never been allowed to before.

‘Rosebud’ is a choice example of what they were trying to do, taking a funky, baggy rhythm section and draping it in heavy, oppressive guitars with melancholic lyrics about destroying something delicate and beautiful, managing to avoid the sense of doom and hopelessness that abounded on their 1994 masterpiece ‘The Holy Bible’, in it’s place retaining the halcyon sense of hope they nurtured over the past two LPs. Sludgy drums and guitar effects keep the band chained to the ground as the chorus and James Dean Bradfield’s vocals try like mad to loose the song soaring off into the stratosphere.

The ‘Remixed, Reconstructed and Re-issued’ version of ‘Know Your Enemy’ is coming out on 09/09/2022. Unlike your average re-release, this 20th anniversary version sees the group hacking the original 16 track album and splitting it into separate parts named ‘Door To The River’ and ‘Solidarity’, taking the original tracks, swapping album tracks with b-sides along with the addition of another unreleased song ‘Studies in Paralysis’, adding an additional CD of demos for good measure. Find the full and extensive track list below:

DISC 1 – DOOR TO THE RIVER

1. The Year of Purification
2. Ocean Spray
3. So Why So Sad (Avalanches Sean Penn Mix)
4. Door To The River
5. Rosebud
6. Just a Kid
7. His Last Painting
8. Let Robeson Sing
9. Groundhog Days
10. Epicentre
11. His Last Painting (LA Mix)
12. Epicentre (TLA Mix)
13. So Why So Sad (Original KYE Version)
14. Royal Correspondent

DISC 2 – SOLIDARITY

1. Intravenous Agnostic
2. Found That Soul (TLA Mix)
3. We Are All Bourgeois Now
4. Freedom of Speech Won’t Feed My Children
5. The Convalescent
6. Baby Elian
7. Masses Against The Classes
8. My Guernica
9. Studies In Paralysis
10. Dead Martyrs
11. Wattsville Blues
12. Miss Europa Disco Dancer
13. Fear Of Motion
14. Pedestal
15. Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel
16. Locust Valley
17. Masking Tape
18. Ballad of the Bangkok Novotel

DISC 3 – DEMOS

1. Ocean Spray (Studio Demo)
2. So Why So Sad (Cassette Demo)
3. Door To The River (Cassette Demo)
4. His Last Painting (Air Version Home Cassette Demo)
5. Let Robeson Sing (Home Cassette Demo)
6. Groundhog Days (Home Cassette Demo)
7. Epicentre (Cassette Demo)
8. Intravenous Agnostic (Home Cassette Demo)
9. Freedom Of Speech Won’t Feed My Children (Studio Demo)
10. The Convalescent (Studio Rehearsal Demo)
11. His Last Painting Baby Elian (Studio Demo)
12. Masses Against The Classes (Studio Demo)
13. My Guernica No 1 (Home Acoustic Demo)
14. My Guernica (Studio Demo)
15. Dead Martyrs (Home Cassette Demo)
16. Wattsville Blues (Home Cassette Demo)

‘Rosebud’ has been given a fantastic new video and you can watch it below: