Manic Street Preachers' Richey record

06 November 2008

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Manic Street Preachers are recording an album using Richey Edwards' lyrics.

The Welsh trio are currently in the studio working on songs using the words left behind by the guitarist when he disappeared in February 1995, and have promised the resulting record will be close in tone to seminal third album 'The Holy Bible', regarded as one of the darkest in rock.

Bassist Nicky Wire told NME magazine: "We've had these lyrics for 14 years and we all felt compelled that this was the right time to do it. It's a follow-up to 'The Holy Bible' in a lot of ways and I did write 25 per cent of the words on that but on this one it felt proper that they were entirely Richey's.

According to the band, the LP - which is provisionally titled 'Journal For Plague Lovers' - will sound half intense post-punk rock with the other songs displaying a more tender acoustic side

"There's a small amount of editing involved because some of them are prose and they needed to be made into lyrics but they're all Richey's."

Tentative titles for the songs include 'Peeled Apples', 'Doors Closing Slowly', 'Jackie Collins' Existential Question Time' and 'William's Last Words' and the bassist admits he has no idea what some of them are about.

Nicky added: "Lyrically some of it is pretty impenetrable even to us and we knew him pretty well. We don't know what he's talking about half the time because he's not around to tell us."

According to the band, the LP - which is provisionally titled 'Journal For Plague Lovers' - will sound "half intense post-punk rock with the other songs displaying a more tender acoustic side".

It is being produced by Steve Albini, who worked on Nirvana's 'In Utero' album.There are no plans to release singles from the record and the band are yet to decide if they will tour in support of the album.Although Richey's car was discovered by an infamous British suicide spot shortly after his disappearance, his body has never been found, though there have been rumoured sightings of him all over the world.

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