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A Design For Life

They haven't toured America in a decade, and the show was 1/3 full at best. But leave it to Manic Street Preachers to give the Majestic Theater a full stadium energy in a small club, rocking the pubes off of the Detroit faithful.

Their new album Journal For Plague Lovers is the first to feature lyrics from their presumed dead bandmate Richey Edwards (who vanished near a notorious suicide spot in 1996) culled from his notebooks. Produced with austere power by Steve Albini, Journal For Plague Lovers continues their late-career resurgence first sparked on Send Away The Tigers from '07, with a renewed rock vim and vigor that had all but vanished from their recorded output for years prior. In other words, if you want rock and roll, you got it. Here's the set list from the recent Detroit show:

  1. Motorcycle Emptiness
  2. No Surface All Feeling
  3. Peeled Apples
  4. Your Love Alone
  5. La Tristessa Durera
  6. Jackie Collins Existential Question Time
  7. Let Robeson Sing
  8. Faster
  9. Enola/Alone
  10. Marlon J.D.
  11. From Despair To Where
  12. Tolerate
  13. This Is Yesterday (Acoustic)
  14. Small Black Flowers (Acoustic)
  15. Send Away The Tigers
  16. You Stole The Sun From My Heart
  17. Motown Junk
  18. Me And Stephen Hawking
  19. Little Baby Nothing
  20. You Love Us
  21. A Design For Life
It was a tremendous time, seeing a band that plays to tens of thousands in Europe rock the hundred or so Michigan folk. If you haven't already checked the band out, by all means begin at the beginning, when their sound was a collision between Guns 'N' Roses, Nirvana, and EMF. (Really.) It only gets better from there.

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