Manics’ Nicky Wire surprise releases new solo album ‘Intimism’
Manic Street Preachers‘ Nicky Wire has surprise released his new solo album ‘Intimism’ – check it out below.
Having recently dropped the launch single ‘Contact Sheets‘, the Manics’ bassist and lyricist has shared his second solo record in full via BandCamp.
“This record is a collage pieced together over the last decade,” said Wire. “It’s as me as me can be – a distillation of my purest indie fantasies, a place where all those broken lists of regret have found themselves realigned. I found a musical and lyrical language I could call my own. A landscape of mundane miracles, interior monologues and lacerating self loathing. As the song says: ‘I am an -ist / I am an -ism / a lifelong affair with tunnel vision’.”
Wire released his debut solo debut ‘I Killed The Zeitgeist’ back in 2006, with fans expecting news of the “modern, electronic, soothsaying” follow-up record for some years now.
“It’s done,” Wire told NME in 2021. “Whatever, I might bury it in a fucking pond somewhere, I might burn it, I might do it mail order, I might do it on Bandcamp. It’s very fucking fragile. It’s got some very off-kilter modern jazz and some C-86 indie vibes to it.”
He continued: “There’s some ‘Bitches Brew’-era Miles Davis in there, some obscure trumpet-led, and some songs that just sound like The Shop Assistants. It features Gav [Fitzjohn] on the trumpet. Sean [Moore, drums and trumpet] refuses to play. He says his lip has gone.”
Manics frontman James Dean Bradfield previously revealed that Wire had been recording his new LP while the singer was at work on his own previous solo album, ‘Even In Exile‘.
“I’d have our studio one day, he’d have it the next, he asked me to play a guitar solo on one of his tracks, and yeah – his stuff is sounding great,” Bradfield told NME. “There was one song on there that was fucking amazing but hard to describe. It was very modern, very electronic, and very soothsaying and prophetic.”
Wire’s brother, the celebrated poet Patrick Jones, has also taken to Twitter to praise the record – hailing it as a “beautiful, reflective album” and highlighting the track ‘White Musk’, written in tribute to their late mother.
Tis a very beautiful reflective album I- I hope you'll like it – White Musk is exceptional – about our dear Mother
https://t.co/uE29druvDD pic.twitter.com/0KLAanyLyA
— patrick jones (@heretic101) July 2, 2023
Speaking to The Quietus about the ethos behind the album, Wire said he wanted ‘Intimism’ to be “as me as me can be”.
“The bit of artwork that exists is just a Polaroid of me,” he said. “I don’t want the rigmarole of pretending this album is something that it’s not.
“I’ve just tried to think of myself as a 16 year old, going into [Cardiff record shop] Spillers – like me and James used to at that age after we’d been busking to raise the money to buy the new record by the Triffids, The Go-Betweens or the Shop Assistants.”
He continued: “I hate the phrase ‘the authentic self’ because I have no idea what that really means. There was an art movement called ‘intimism’, which included the great Gwen John who I’m a big fan of, and it was about these mundane paintings of the interior, which were made almost holy in their ordinariness. I’ve always been attracted to that because I love the mundane nature of being inside. I can’t tell you how many lovely summers me and my brother had closing the curtains and watching cricket all day long. It was beautiful.
“There’s a line on the album, ‘I’m not a socialist anymore. The social bit leaves me cold.’ I am still a socialist and I do believe in it but I’ve always struggled with the communal, social aspect of it. I see so much excitement and beauty in things like my memory of being 12 and in my room watching Steve Davis get the first 147 ever at the Lada Classic on a black and white TV.”
Having released books and put on exhibitions of his work Polaroid images, Wire spoke of the profound impact of the medium.
“Years ago when on tour with the band, I’d be up at 7.30am and go out around whatever city we were in and take maybe 30 to 50 Polaroids,” he said. “I wouldn’t really look at them. I would go back to my room and seal them in the hotel envelope. I still haven’t looked at any of them. It’s a kind of art experiment.
“Those trigger points made a big impact and framed the sense of fragmented memory that set the scene for the album a bit.”
The Manics have recently been posting images to social media of the band at work on the follow-up to 2021’s acclaimed ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament‘.
Earlier this month, the band proved to be one of the highlights of Glastonbury festival after storming the The Other Stage with a set that paid tribute to Richey Edwards, included deep cuts from cult classic ‘The Holy Bible’ alongside hit singles and fan favourites, and featured two duets with collaborator The Anchoress.
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Andrew Trendell
NME
