This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

The belief that music can provide emotional salvation is in short supply in rock 'n' roll these days. Old records by groups like U2 convey the feeling, and so do some recent releases by younger acts like New Radicals. Thankfully, the notion also comes across on the latest CD by the British band Manic Street Preachers. The group offers up big, melodic, cathedral-filling songs that clearly have social and spiritual aspirations beyond just rocking the house: one of the tracks is bluntly titled If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next. A few numbers are a bit limp, but when this group is on, it can make you believe that rock is sacred.

--By Christopher John Farley