Send Away The Tigers 10 Year Collectors’ Edition review

(Originally posted on Saturday, 27 May 2017)

Send Away The Tigers is the 8th studio album by Manic Street Preachers (my favourite music band), but it's the first one that I FULLY enjoyed. It's a great classic rock album with some fun and quite positive, yet still thought-provoking lyrics. Pure fun!

This is arguably their most consistent and homogeneous album. I believe that any person who likes rock music would enjoy it.

In May 2017 this great album celebrated its tenth anniversary and to mark the occasion a 10 Year Collectors’ Edition of the album "packed with unheard music, unseen footage and artwork from the band’s own archive" was released.

My rating (overall): 10/10

My individual ratings:
CD1 only: 10/10
CD2 only: 10/10
DVD only: 10/10

Send Away The Tigers is a great album and its remastered version is even better. More importantly there are 18 (EIGHTEEN !!!) songs that were not on ANY studio album (they were either B-sides or were never officially released). Among them there are such diamonds as Welcome To The Dead Zone (on the CD1) and Umbrella, Ghost of Christmas, Little Girl Lost and 1404 (on the CD2).

The CD2 on its own would be a dream come true for most of the music bands, but for Manics it's only “B-sides & Rarities”. On top of that the CD1 contains demos of all the songs from the original album, including the demo of the song Underdogs that was replaced by the song Welcome To The Dead Zone. By the way, the Underdogs demo is surprisingly good. Additionally the CD2 contains acoustic versions of the songs Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (Nina Persson solo!) and Autumnsong.

But it's not all !!! The DVD is as fantastic as the CDs! The main feature of the DVD is the live concert at the Glastonbury Festival in 2007 that featured a very good set-list. There are classics like Motorcycle Emptiness, You Stole the Sun From My Heart, Everything Must Go, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next and A Design for Life. There are also some of my favourite tracks from the album Send Away The Tigers – Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (with Nina Persson!), Autumnsong and Imperial Bodybags. There is also the song Ocean Spray which has never been among my favourites, but this particular performance is very appealing to me. I also greatly enjoyed that particular performance of the song Motown Junk, which was a non-album single released in 1991 – before their first studio album.

And it's still not all !!! The DVD extras contain 4 music videos (most importantly Your Love Alone Is Not Enough and Indian Summer videos), a making-of video for Your Love Alone Is Not Enough video, a Track by Track interview with the band and videos from rehearsals and practices sessions. AWESOME!

Here's if the full content:
https://store.manicstreetpreachers.com/products/send-away-the-tigers-10-year-collectors-edition-2cd-1dvd-book-set

I'll finish with the thing that people start with in a music store – the physical package. It's the first thing you come across and I'm afraid that in this case some people may refrain from buying the collectors’ edition because of how the package looks.

When I got the box and it was still in a transparent foil the first thing I thought was: “Why the hell am I seeing parts of the CDs and the DVD?” It turned out that the CDs and the DVD are slid into paper slots that are incorporated in a hardcover booklet. In other words: there are no plastic covers for the CDs, nor the DVD! I am a freak who needs to be sure that his CDs will not get damaged by sliding them in and out of a tight slots, so to be satisfied I had to empty my own 3 plastic CD covers to protect the CDs and the DVD the way I think is adequate. It’s a shame that something called “collectors’ edition” comes with such a poor package. Here's how I handled this problem:

Well, I don’t think it’s the band’s fault. Knowing how the corporations operate I believe that the band were given a kind of ultimatum and were asked to choose between “a better package” and “less content”. If that was the case then they made the right choice. The content is all that counts, not the package. And the content is well worth the price.

On a bright side: the leaflet features similar pictures to the ones in the original leaflet, which is very good because the feeling about the album is not changed. The difference is that the new leaflet features not the final (a little shorter) lyrics in printed letters, but the pictures of the original (a little longer) lyrics that are mostly handwritten. Cool.

To be perfect the package should also contain lyrics for all the songs, not just the main ones, but there are so many songs that it would be problematic. Maybe the lyrics could be uploaded to the band's official site and the booklet would just point it out?

Summing up: Send Away The Tigers 10 Year Collectors' Edition (CDx2 + DVD Box set) was worth every penny. My wife kept her promise and paid for it as a present for my 39th birthday. :)