We're back to the good old days! The press hate the Manics once more, having sneered at their decision to launch the album with a gig at the Karl Marx Theatre, Havana, Cuba (I've got to do that someday - as Nicky Wire said, "it beats Kettering Leisure Centre!"), and their idea of releasing two singles on the same day simply because no other major band has ever done it. And Nicky Wire's new short haircut hasn't stopped him from wearing skirts.

The album opens with one of the aforementioned singles, "Found That Soul". It's a punky little number, with a guitar solo just asking for pogo-jumping and air guitar, and some typically venomous lyrics from The Wire ("still stranded here, with all the scum"). But you can't help feeling that, after the poetics of "This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours", the Wire's wordsmithery on "Know Your Enemy" is somewhat inconsistent, and the lazy rage of "Found That Soul" typifies this.

"Ocean Spray" is a fairly tranquil acoustic track, with a mournful, Latino-flavoured trumpet solo from drummer Sean Moore. It also features singer/guitarist James Dean Bradfield's first ever recorded lyric, concerning the death of his mother from cancer in 1999, ("it's easy to breathe only air where life should be"). A poignant moment indeed. Think of Blur's "Coffee & TV", only with the milk cartons dressed in black cloaks and carrying scythes, and you're not far off.

"Intravenous Agnostic" is another punk-rocker with a storming chorus, and while Nicky's lyrics are at their pretentious, arty best in places ("dismayed, dispossessed/life becomes Calvinist/so sparkle and believe/linguistics die easily"), in others they seem to descend almost into self-parody ("brutality is needed/in capitalist society" being a prime example).

Next up is the other single, "So Why So Sad". It's a gorgeous Beach Boys-style song, complete with corny stylophone solo and "ba ba ba" backing vocals. I was baffled at first, but now I love it. "Let Robeson Sing" has been described as "a political love song" and "our trans-Atlantic Number One!" by Nicky, and it's easy to see why. It borders on cheesiness, but never quite crosses the line. The lyric concerns Paul Robeson, black actor/singer and political activist, persecuted for communist sympathies in the 50s ("the CIA say you're the guilty man/will we see the likes of you again?"). It ends with the life affirming chant "sing it loud/sing it proud/I will be heard/I will be found". These two departures mark the album's centrepiece and its finest two tracks.

On "The Year Of Purification", the band do a passable impression of early R.E.M., while the lyrics are obscure and impenetrable until Nicky, through James' voice, sneers "what have I said?/what have I said again?/I regret everything/moral little s***kickers, liberal asinine pricks" - this is more like the high quality Wire venom we know and love.

"Wattsville Blues", after "So Why So Sad" and "Let Robeson Sing", is the third of four distinctly weird songs here. It features Nicky's first ever lead vocal for the odd verses, with James joining in for the somehow anthemic chorus. It ends with Nicky declaring "try to understand that I f***ing despise every single living organism", part of a lyric about the glorious boredom of life in small-town Wales. The fourth weird track is "Miss Europa Disco Dancer", a funky bit of disco (yes, that’s right, disco), with a great bass line and wickedly sarcastic lyrics about the hedonistic voyeurism of the Ibiza crowd (it ends with Wire chanting "braindead motherf***ers" over and over again). However, once their initial novelty value has worn off, both tracks are, by Manics standards, somehow unsatisfying.

“Dead Martyrs” is what Nirvana might have sounded like had they hailed from South Wales rather than Seattle; it’s a rocker with a great riff and a classic Manics chorus ("got no future/just dead stars for dead eyes", over a wall of guitar). It's only let down by some more below par lyrics from Wire in the verses ("dead heroes/for fear of zeroes").

Tellingly, James said of “His Last Painting” that it was one of the only occasions when he did not question Nicky as to the meaning of the lyrics. They are certainly amongst his most open and confessional ever (“it’s not my life anymore/don’t speak the truth anymore”, “feels like I’ve lost myself/to everybody and everything else”, and the sort-of chorus “I can’t see right from my wrong/I’ve loved so much that I can’t go on”). The musical backing is arty soft rock, with James dropping in yet another great guitar solo.

“My Guernica” is in a similar vein to “Dead Martyrs”, but not as good. The unpolished, fuzzy sound quality begins to grate, as do Nicky’s uneven lyrics and James' yelping vocals. Next, and infinitely more impressive, is “The Convalescent”, a six minute semi-punk exploration of life in Wire World. It has an odd chorus with an organ that makes you feel like you’re at the circus. The lyric name-checks a variety of Wire idols: Picasso, Bonny and Clyde, the late golfer Payne Stewart, Jack "Doctor Death" Kevorkian, athletes Haille Gabrisallasse and Alberto Juanterina, and Brian Warner (alias Marylin Manson) among them. Look out for the great line “Kleenex kitchen towels and Teletext TV/my favourite inventions of the 20th Century”.

My least favourite track on “Know Your Enemy” is “Royal Correspondent”, an anti-monarchist (quite right too) tirade against the sycophantic journalist of the title. The musical backdrop is a rudimentary acoustic guitar, and the lyrics feel pointless in places (“you’d like the chance to eat their food/even though it has been chewed”), though there is the great line “they’re in-bred baby, just like you”. "Royal Correspondent" is perhaps the epitome of the lyrical incompleteness that pervades a lot of the record.

“Epicentre”, while being maybe slightly over-long, is another piece of quality song-writing, with acoustic guitar, drums and piano fitting together snugly. It also includes another of my favourite lines on the album, “feels like there’s no escape, except through my hate”.

Nicky saves the end of the album for launching a barrage of fierce politics. The album’s fifteenth track is “Baby Elian”, a lullaby-esque moment, primarily concerning Cuban child Elian Gonzalez and the US-Cuban custody battle over him which saw him eventually returned to the socialist island. The song berates America’s economic imperialism and voodoo economics as “blackmail”, with lyrics which sound as if they have been supplied by the Cuban Ministry of Propaganda (which is no bad thing). The line “you don’t just sit in a rocking chair/when you’ve built a revolution” brought a standing ovation from the magnificently iconic Fidel Castro when he turned up at their Havana gig. The album proper ends with one of its best tracks. “Freedom Of Speech Won’t Feed My Children” (best song title ever) is an imperious rocker in which Nicky delivers what to my mind are his finest solo lyrics to date, alongside “A Design For Life” and “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next”. The song admonishes the hypocrites who criticise China’s human rights record, without looking at the state and actions of their own countries (mentioning no names, George W. and Tony), including a handbags at dawn dig at the Beastie Boys. The interlude describes the monarchy as being “just like Stalin/human and useless”. These last two tracks, while not as good as "Let Robeson Sing", share its un-self-conscious sense of political purpose. Five minutes later, the band’s first “secret track” rears its head – a cacophonous cover of political 80s indie band McCarthy’s “We Are All Bourgeois Now”, which is perhaps one of the best things here.

The band have hinted that, as they are all now into their thirties, this may be their penultimate album, bar a Best Of and a possible compilation of B-sides. If it is, let’s hope that the last one is better than this; it's not a bad album, it's just that it's difficult not to feel let down by one too many underdeveloped punk songs and lacklustre lyrics, especially in amongst some great songs that show just how good the Manics can be.


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