Generic Ratings: 1: Crap. 2: Okay. 3: Good. 4: Great
I remember shortly before the release of Know Your Enemy that James did an interview for some music magazine – it could even have been a guitar magazine, where he proclaimed that the band were ‘ready for war’. It was typical Manics sloganeering and bravado but it symbolized some of the thoughts they were sharing at the time – that perhaps the success of their last two albums had taken them too far from their musical, political, and lyrical roots, that they had accumulated a host of new fans who knew nothing of their past, and that they had spent too long being shoe-horned into a movement to which they never belonged. The net result was supposed to be a return to a more fierce, polemic sound and everything about this first single and opening track Found That Soul was geared towards those thoughts. It has a fast, traditional, punk sound, the production is pulled waaay back, and the video is a bunch of books being dropped onto a table. James whips out a solo and has a bit of a snarl to his vocals again, yet the constant clatter of the piano gives it a grounded rock’n’roll vibe.
Misheard Lyrics: 1. Show me or wander you can’t piss you off
2. A band still stranded here
3. So clean so rusk (?)/Soaking so rust
4. Sick and fail but/Sickened feel but
Actual Lyrics: 1. Show me a wonder you can’t be sure of
2. But still stranded here
3. So clean so lost
4. Sick and pale but
The Spac Hole 