Everything Must Go (1996)

Everything Must Go is the fourth studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers, released on 20 May 1996 by Epic Records. It was the first record released as a trio, following the disappearance of lyricist and rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards.

Released at the height of Britpop in the mid-1990s, the album was a commercial and critical success, it reached its peak in the UK on separate occasions, debuting and peaking at number 2 in the UK Albums Chart and earned the band accolades in the 1997 Brit Awards. It represented a shift in the group's sound due to Edwards' departure. The album charted in mainland Europe, Asia and Australia, eventually selling over two million copies. Everything Must Go is frequently featured and voted highly in lists for one of the best albums of all time by many music publications such as NME and Q.

Production and content

Singer-songwriter James Dean Bradfield said that the sound of the drums was crucial on the album to set the tone. He was inspired by the works of several bands, "I loved records like Pornography by The Cure and Joy Division records and Wire records and Magazine records and [Siouxsie and the] Banshees records and Wah! records and Associates records where everything starts with the drums". Producer Mike Hedges was the person the group had in mind since The Holy Bible in part for his production role on Siouxsie and the Banshees' single "Swimming Horses" of which Bradfield was a fan. The band stayed in Domfront en Poiraie, France, to work at Hedges' own studio which contained a mixing desk coming from the Abbey Road Studios.

Music and lyrics

The working title of the album was Sounds in the Grass, named after a series of paintings by Jackson Pollock. Everything Must Go takes its name from a play by Patrick Jones, Nicky Wire's brother.

Everything Must Go represents a change of style for the band. Their previous album, The Holy Bible, had been a stark, disturbing album with a minimal amount of instrumentation, whilst this album embraces synths and strings with an anthemic rock style, has a more commercial feel and fits with the Britpop movement that was prevalent at the time. According to Wire, the concept of the album used as its sonic basis the productions of Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound.

The lyrical focus of the album is also shifted, due in part to Edwards' departure. Instead of introspective and autobiographical tracks such as "4st 7lb", Wire's predilection for historical and political themes dominates; however, five songs feature Edwards' lyrics – the last time his lyrics would feature in a Manics album until 2009's Journal for Plague Lovers. The album's lyrical themes would continue through their next record, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours.

Subjects tackled on the album include the life of photographer Kevin Carter, in the song of the same name; Willem de Kooning in "Interiors"; and the maltreatment of animals in captivity in "Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky" (which is a quote from the film The Best Years of Our Lives). The latter track, with lyrics by Edwards, can also be interpreted as an exploration of his mental state before his disappearance; the line "Here chewing your tail is joy" for instance may be as much about Edwards's self-harm as it is the tormented self-injury of zoo animals.

Part of the rhythm guitar on "No Surface All Feeling" was recorded by Edwards before his disappearance, making it only the second time that Edwards' guitar-work was present on a Manic Street Preachers recorded track (the other instance being "La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)" on Gold Against the Soul). Bradfield typically performs all the guitar parts for their recordings.

Songs

Due to Edwards' departure the tone of the lyrics and the subjects of the songs changed significantly. Wire stated about the aesthetic and the feel of the album, saying that: "With "Everything Must Go", in the way we talked about it, we were the most timid we'd ever been, because we were very nervous. It was strange because it was the most un-Manics we've been about in an album, and then it was the most successful.

"Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier" and "Enola/Alone"

The opening song of the album, "Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier", has been described by the band as a song that reflects the way that the UK accepts the American culture and worships it. In the 10th anniversary edition, Bradfield stated that the song suited the mood of the album and reminds him of when Wire and Edwards used to write lyrics together. Being Edwards' work, Bradfield denies that this song or any other written by Edwards and featured on the album is a tribute to Edwards; he just thought that the lyrics suited the album well. In the band's own words, "Enola/Alone" is both "uplifting" and "melancholic", and that's why people can "grab on" as Wire says. The lyrics are also inspired to some extent by Camera Lucida, a 1980 book on the philosophy of photography by Frenchman Roland Barthes.