Great ‘Bleed Like Me’ Kerrang! review KKKK (out of 5)

Bleed Like Me very nearly never existed. With inter-band relationships reaching boiling point during recording, drummer Butch Vig announced that he’d had enough. Thank god he had a change of heart, because this is the most exciting, touching, and most painfully human material they’ve put out in years.
The key, as ever, is Shirley Manson. Her strength has always been her honesty – despite her ice-cool demeanour and fearsome intellect, she’s always worn her insecurities on her sleeve, fore-grounding her fragility as much as her toughness. She’s never used her femininity as a marketing tool. Nor has she ever abandoned it to become one of the boys. She’s always just been her. That’s what makes her an icon. And never has that strength of character shone as brightly as it does here.
Most striking is the title-track – the most poignant, emphatic reflection of self-abuse and neuroses since Manic Street Preachers’ ‘4st 7lb’. Over a gorgeous cello-strewn background, Shirley liltingly introduces us to various outsiders – anorexics, the sexually confused, self-harmers – before ending on a euphoric ‘You should see my scars’. A teenage self-harmer, she’s not glamorising the problems here. Quite the opposite. These are battle scars, worn with pride, there to show that she survived and got though it.
Her insecurities rear their head during the queasy disco-rock of ‘Metal Heart’ (‘I wish I was half as good as you think I am’) and the dirty rock stomp of ‘Why Do You Love Me’ (‘I am not as pretty as girls in magazines, I am rotten to the core’). But her mouthy, opinionated side gets a welcome airing too. The soaring ‘Right Between The Eyes’ is an impassioned call to follow your own path, while ‘Sex Is Not The Enemy’ has Manson demanding the right to be open and unashamed about her sexuality.
Of course, it’s not all about Shirley. Musically, this is far noisier and grittier than 2001’s over-produced ‘Beautifulgarbage’. Dave Grohl’s appearance as drummer on blazing opener ‘Bad Boyfriend’ sets the album off in a manner so forceful it leaves no room to catch your breath, while the downbeat ‘Happy Home’ is the most breathtakingly emotive song they’ve written since breakthrough single ‘Only Happy When It Rains’.
‘Bleed Like Me’ may have had a difficult birth, but it’s clearly been worth the pain.
[source: garbagedisco.com/forum – thanks to stupidboyuk]