Whatever the actual motivation for playing up to full blown solo aspirations in between the now stock-quality Manics albums – and James Dean Bradfield certainly doesn’t have the air of a man desperately in need of alternative creative avenues, another cup of cranberry juice maybe, or a trouser press – this debut release from the frontman in comfortable slacks can claim at least one unexpected triumph. It is proof, if some were needed, that he is no Nicky Wire. His clumsy ham-fisted bass ‘playing’ colleague undid any withering dignity he had left with astounding aplomb at Latitude festival in July – coming across as the flaccid light-entertainer, Jonathan Ross without the jokes, vitamin supplements, personal trainer and sprinkling of gold dust on his suit lapels, and sounding like a good-as-deaf busker trying to flog some tatty tune to Bowie. Embarrassing is an acute enough conclusion, but that still doesn’t really cover it.
Bradfield conversely does nothing of the sort, choosing to largely stay put, in character. Just without the Tweedle-twins having access to his rider. So, does this mean it more or less sounds like a Manic Street Preachers record? A little, yes. But there must be something there to justify this flight of fancy? Well as it happens, there really is, though it might take a healthy buffer period to unfurl itself. With the Manics he’s locked into a temperament, bound by their history and its expectations, something that as the years pass by he seems to have more trouble, or at least less success, making sense of. There is nothing here that you won’t find in some measure on his band’s recordings, only those factors that he chooses to embellish here don’t remain so capped.
On ‘The Great Western’ he explores his simmering passion for music rooted in the melodic magnetism of the 1950s forwards, back when pop was soft-skinned, dewy-eyed and either dependably perky or a reassuringly heartbroken shade of blue. What this boils down to is the Manics with an awful lot more in the way of “Oooo-la-la-la”s, handclaps and acre-wide waterfalls of harmony. Just walk into the wall of sound amid the Small Faces foundation of ‘An English Gentleman’ and the chimingly choral Four Topsian highlight ‘Bad Boys & Painkillers’ to feel its strength drench you like a warm south-westerly autumn breeze.
The breadth of his capability within this context is surprising and a key achievement of this showcase. His songwriting too takes long deep reenergising breaths, feeling more nourished than it has for many years, finding the right balance between quasi-intellectual, emotional and melodically accomplished. Perhaps sending Wire out to seek musical misadventure was insurance, a damage limitation exercise. If so, he needn’t have bothered. He’s just created an album that has given him the longevity we presumed had long expired.