1998: Manic Street Preachers: This is My Truth Tell Me Yours

I've chosen this particular album because it marks the time when, strange as it may sound, the Manic Street Preachers were the biggest band in Britain. Following on from the surprising success of their 4th album 'Everything Must Go' they consolidated and built on that commercial success. It was Number 1 for 3 weeks, it sold several million copies worldwide, it won the Brit Award for Best British Album.

To me, right then, it was the most important thing in the world. I remember the day it came out. I remember it well. I was on a week long boat trip on the Norfolk Broads. It just so happened that we stopped for lunch at Wroxham, a big enough town to have a WH Smith, to which I hastened and found my prize.

The new Manics album. A guaranteed hit. The single 'If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next' had already beaten Steps to Number 1 (just as the album would steptacularly deny the Steps album 'Step One').

Perhaps, looking back, that boat trip was the changing of the guard for my music taste. As excited as I was by the Manics, I was listening to Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley. My Britpop taste would head further and further across the Atlantic in the coming months and years. I think, even then, I could tell that this was not quite where I was at anymore.

It would be untrue, for a couple of reasons, to say that this is the last great Manics album, firstly because fans of the band would argue that at least three of their later albums are as good as anything they've ever done, so really it's fairer to say that this was the last Manics album that I devoted long, long hours of listening to. Secondly, because 'This is My Truth Tell Me Yours' is not a great album. Not really. Even if you don't hate the Manics, even if you love them, like I do. It's not a great album.

This was their real grown-up album. Looking at the cover, its bleak anti-style imagery (beach at Porthmadog, beautiful, Manics in baggy middle-aged beige), you realise it's a statement, but anti-aesthetic is still an aesthetic, and those closes look baaad. No wonder some older fans of the Manics, fans of their punkish sounds, big slogans, eyeliner and stencilled t-shirts, took against it. They were still in their 20s, for heaven's sake.

Thematically, in terms of lyrics, it's not so bland. There are songs ABOUT THINGS, about war and prison and Wales and crime and gender and tragedy, about loss and depression. Some of them are really good songs.

Listening back to it now, I still love the swooning rock anthemics when they get it right, I love James Dean Bradfield's voice, I love the tunes, I'm regularly moved by it. The first half is full of big songs, big songs that really work, 'Tsunami', 'Ready for Drowing', 'You Stole the Sun from My Heart', they're all potential singles. The second half, hmm, it's more awkward, slower, more dirgy, weirder, and it really just doesn't work as well. It does contain one of the very best Manics songs, though - 'Black Dog on My Shoulder', a really lovely piece of chamber pop about the black dog of depression.

But the album is hampered by a few things. Firstly, frankly, it's hampered by the fact that the 'SYMM' the closing track, is ... one ... of ... the ... worst ... songs ... of ... all ... time... by ... anyone ... ever. SYMM stands for South Yorkshire Mass Murderer. It is a song with the very best intentions. It is about the Hillsborough disaster - the title accuses, accurately as it turned out, the police in the fiercest way possible. But the lyrics ... jesus. I was going to paste them in here, but that would be cruel. Read them here, just read them. Jesus. Those are bad lyrics. You can tell they felt this song needed to be on the album, but they had no idea how to write it. It's painful.

I think this was the first Manics album where people began to point out that some of their lyrics/scansion etc didn't really work, and it was the first time I had to agree. Perhaps it was just my understanding of verse growing but where, before, I'd have loved the lyrics because they were brave words and they were about something, I began to realise that lines like "The future teaches you to be alone, the present to be afraid and cold" and "Give me some more of your carrier bags" could really stick out in a bad way unless handled perfectly.

Their next album 'Know Your Enemy' and the one after that 'Lifeblood' were really pretty dreadful, first swamped by too much conceptual ambition, then lifeless and drab. But they kept going and the general consensus is that their last four or so LPs have really been as good as you could expect from a band in their 40s who claimed over 20 years ago that they would split up after their first album.

Their constant battle is between grand orchestral graceful rock and fearsome punkish fury. Their two greatest albums, Everything Must Go, and its predecessor, The Holy Bible, display those two aspects respectively.

This is My Truth Tell Me Yours is a natural successor to Everything Must Go - there's not much punkish about it. It's the first album without lyrical input from Richey Edwards and for a large part, the band deal with that absence really well. Nicky Wire, for such a wonderful talker, is really not a natural writer of verse. That's my view.

It's not a truly great album, but if you think it's great that a band of South Wales misfits beat Steps to Number 1, if you think it's great that a song about the Spanish Civil War got to Number 1, if you basically think it's pretty great when James Dean Bradfield really gives it some with either voice or guitar, then there's a lot to love here.

A playlist!

Prologue to History
Motorcycle Emptiness
Faster
La Tristesse Durere
Little Baby Nothing
Spectators of Suicide
From Despair to Where
Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky
She is Suffering
This is Yesterday
Black Dog on My Shoulder
Yes
Ready For Drowning
Your Love Alone is Not Enough
She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach
Show Me the Wonder
Life Becoming a Landslide
A Design for Life
All Surface, No Feeling
Tsunami

Maybe not actually my favourite 20, but i wanted a spread