Lifeblood is the seventh studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers, released on 1 November 2004 by Sony Music UK. Two singles were released from the album: "The Love of Richard Nixon" and "Empty Souls".

While the album was met with generally positive reviews from critics, it is the band's least commercially successful album, peaking at number 13 in the UK Album Charts and has often been derided by the band members themselves, although they have expressed more positive opinions in recent years.

An expanded and remastered edition was released in 2024 to mark its 20th anniversary.

Writing and recording

The working title of Lifeblood was Litany, such as on their own past ("1985") and missing member Richey Edwards ("Cardiff Afterlife"). Lyricist Nicky Wire talked about the ghosts that haunted this record and stated that the record was a retrospective: "The main themes are death and solitude and ghosts. Being haunted by history and being haunted by your own past. Sleep is beautiful for me. I hate dreaming because it ruins ten hours of bliss. I had a lot of bad dreams when Richey first disappeared. Not ugly dreams, but nagging things. Until we wrote 'Design for Life', it was six months of misery. Lifeblood doesn't seek to exorcise Edwards' ghost, though, just admits that there are no answers".

Work on recording Lifeblood began in New York City with legendary producer Tony Visconti, but these sessions led to only three finished tracks: "Solitude Sometimes Is", "Emily" and "Cardiff Afterlife". The band then decided to continue with frequent collaborator Greg Haver and moved to Grouse Lodge Studio in County Westmeath, Ireland and then Stir Studios in Cardiff, Wales. Additional production and final mixing was completed by Tom Elmhirst.

The album is a departure musically, replacing the band's traditional guitar walls of sound with more subtle and melodic playing, with more emphasis being given to keyboards and synthesizers. This resulted in the album being described as pop rock, synthpop, and synthrock . Nicky Wire described the album as "elegiac pop" throughout the recording process. It is the band's first album not to feature profanity, although the single release for "Empty Souls" featured an edit to remove the mention of the Twin Towers.

Singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield recalled the writing and recording process in 2015: "I felt like we were suffering from something called paralysis to analysis in the process of writing. Perhaps we'd run out of juice, and there was another version of the band that we needed to find [in] ourselves. So we had this MO before we went into the studio of not trusting our first idea or second idea, and we'd always chase the third idea. We'd write a song and discard our distinctive way of playing that song. Also we didn't really play together on that record — there wasn't much live playing. I would lay down a vocal and a guitar track, and Nick and Sean would come in and put down tracks separately. There is an element to that record where it feels slightly virtual and disconnected, and inorganic. It lacks our true instinct. It lacks the essence of what we are. I think we talked ourselves into a corner. It was an investigation that didn't work."

Nicky Wire reflected on the album in 2021: "Lifeblood is very much a withdrawal album. I was digging deeper holes, to just piss people off - without even trying. There's certain bits of it we do love. But as a man who grew up with the Guinness Book of Hit Records, the fact that the album went in at Number 13 just crushed me: 'Not even in the Top 10?! How has this happened?

Release

Lifeblood was preceded by the single "The Love of Richard Nixon", released on 18 October 2004. During the mid-week chart the single was at the No. 1 position, but dropped and ended up peaking at No. 2 on the UK singles chart.

Lifeblood was released on 1 November 2004. It entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 13, selling 23,990 in the first week and spending only 4 weeks in the Top 100 in total (3 of them in the Top 75 including a re-entry at No. 27 in 2024). The album went Silver, but was the least commercially successful album by the band. By 2011 it had only sold around 90,000 copies in the UK.

| rev1 = AllMusic

| rev1score =

| rev2 = BBC Music

| rev2score = favourable

| rev3 = Drowned in Sound

| rev3score = 9/10

| rev4 = The Guardian

| rev4score =

| rev5 = Mojo

| rev5score =

| rev6 = NME

| rev6score = 6/10

| rev7 = PopMatters

| rev7score = 7/10

| rev9 = Uncut

| rev9score =

| rev10 = Yahoo! Music UK

| rev10score = 6/10 Similarly, Louder Than War stated that the album "provided a blueprint for some of the Manics’ more sedate recent albums, including 2021’s The Ultra Vivid Lament" and that it "elicits melancholy in razor-sharp quality."

The band themselves have also begun speaking positively about the album and how they had previously been dismissive of it. Wire explained in 2024: "I think we’ve realised that it’s one of our best records. My problem was just that it was so unsuccessful."

Track listing

2024 Remastered Editions

On 12th April 2024 the album was reissued as Lifeblood 20 in single CD, 3CD digibook and 2LP formats to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its original release. It features two new remixes of "1985" by Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson and the Cornish singer Gwenno.

Personnel

Manic Street Preachers

  • James Dean Bradfield – lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar
  • Sean Moore – drums, drum programming
  • Nicky Wire – bass guitar

Additional musicians

  • Nick Nasmyth – keyboards
  • Jeremy Shaw – additional keyboards
  • Greg Haver – percussion

Technical personnel

  • Greg Haver – production on tracks 1–9 and 11
  • Tony Visconti – production on tracks 7, 10 and 12
  • Tom Elmhirst – additional production on tracks 1, 2, 7, 10 and 12, mixing on tracks 1, 2 and 4–12
  • Mark "Spike" Stent – mixing of "Empty Souls"
  • Mario J. McNulty – engineering assistance
  • Stefano Sofia – engineering assistance
  • Steve Davis – engineering assistance
  • Loz Williams – engineering assistance on "Empty Souls"
  • Farrow Design – design and direction
  • John Ross – photography
  • Metro Imaging – image manipulation

Charts

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! scope="col"| Chart (2004)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

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Certifications

References

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  • Lifeblood at YouTube (streamed copy where licensed)