Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire
The Manic Street Preachers are working on an "acoustic soul" album.
The 'If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next' group have dropped their original plan to record a huge album called '70 Songs of Hatred and Failure', after the tracks they were writing started to separate into two distinctly different groups.
Bass player Nicky Wire said: "We haven't covered anything up with noise, like loud guitars or string sections. As a band there's nothing to hide behind. It's frightening to think how we'll play it live. On the upside, it means that me and Sean [Moore, drummer] can sit in the dressing room for half the gig while James [Dean Bradfield, singer and guitarist] does all the f***ing work."
While the sounds of the album - tentatively titled 'Rewind the Film' - may have become softer, the lyrical themes will be as political as ever, with one track, 'Thirty Year War', railing against the governing Conservative Party in Britain.
Nicky added to Q magazine: "People expected me to be banging on about [former Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher when she died, but everything I thought was already in 'Thirty Year War', a song we wrote six months ago. It addresses everything from the roots of Thatcherism through to Hillsborough and Orgreave, right through to now."
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