Opener ‘Still Snowing In Sapporo’ sets the scene: it’s 1993, the Manic Street Preachers are on tour in Japan — in a city famous for beer, skiing and the annual Sapporo Snow festival. “There are no holes in my recollections,” claims James Dean Bradfield’s vocal, which is draped over a woozy, electronic melody drenched in plenty of reverb. Recalling a memory two years prior to the disappearance of guitarist Richey Edwards, this song is a snapshot of a moment in time — a historical record. 

‘Diapause’ reflects the transient nature of memories like this one with the line “I view you like a statue” contrasting a durable historical record with an impermanent — and fallible — human memory. However much we might like to fix certain memories in place forever, the human brain is susceptible to all sorts of diseases and memory-altering conditions. To counter this, we take things we want to remember and we turn them into objects: statues, books, photographs, diary entries — and for the artistically inclined, songs or paintings. 

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