In early 2014, the only song I had in my iTunes library from Manic Street Preachers’ 2009 album, Journal for Plague Lovers, was ‘Jackie Collins Existential Question Time’. There was no official single from the LP, but that song was chosen as the main promotional cut from it, getting its own music video and stuff. I was in my first year of uni. I was hosting a radio station. Needed more songs to fill out a playlist. ‘Jackie Collins…’ was sitting there, all alone in my personal library, so I thought there’d be no harm in downloading the other album tracks. I knew the context around it, being made up of songs with lyrics by original bandmember Richey Edwards before his disappearance in ’95. It had a 7.8 rating on Pitchfork when it wasn’t all Condé Nast-ed. It felt like it had the potential to be a very interesting listen. I went through the album from front to back on 12th February 2014. Out of the other 12 tracks I got to know through hearing it, it was the second-last one, ‘Virginia State Epileptic Colony’, that became a favourite of mine I think almost instantly. I repeated it a lot that year.

I do remember wondering if it was actually James Dean Bradfield singing on it. Of course it was, ’cause who else would it be? But when it got to the choruses where he elongates “Piggyyyy” and “VSECeeee”, I thought there was a grit on his vocal that otherwise hadn’t been on the rest of the album. Sounded like it was recorded in a totally different place. Once I realised that I liked the whole album and found the “Making of” documentary, I was bummed to see that every respective song contained footage of the band working on it in the studio except ‘Virginia State…’ which was put in place as the credits music. With that being the case, I’ve got in my head canon that the track was probably the last one recorded for the album and maybe very quickly too. Whatever the circumstances, this is one Manic Street Preachers song that I could honestly leave on repeat for about half an hour without getting tired of it. The song goes by so briskly, its structure very easy to follow, with so many melodic components included. The guitar riff that alternates between the open chords and the rising/descending guitar scale in the introduction, very catchy. James Dean Bradfield’s vocals, again, very melodic and memorable from start to finish. The only nitpick I would have is how he really tries to rhyme “half-circled light” with “potassium percolate”. It’s quite awkward. But those are the lyrics he had to work with. Sean Moore’s drumming is solid as a rock. Nicky Wire on bass guitar follows the root note, mainly. But he does provide the skipping piano line during the instrumental break, and that’s probably the most delightful part of the entire track.

The song’s title isn’t a phrase Richey Edwards invented. It’s in fact based on the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, a state-run institution holding patients with severe mental impairment and others who were considered to be “feeble-minded.” An outdated term. There’s a whole Wikipedia article on it. At some point, Edwards did his own research on the institution, got some lyrics down and passed them on to his friends/bandmembers before he was never to be seen again. The lyrics detail the “choices” on offer to the inhabitants within the institution, but then, it’s like they don’t have much choice considering their mental states. Whatever they’re handed is really their only option. All very sarcastic, which Edwards could very much be in his lyricism. I mean, if you want to hear an official statement on the song’s meaning/background from the band, there’s no better video than the track-by-track analysis they did for NME. That is a video that’s come in handy for all the …Plague Lovers songs I’ve written about on the blog. How many songs by Manic Street Preachers are on here, ten or something? There are so much more by the band I like now. I always had respect for them ’cause they made The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go. But in June, I went through the entirety of their discography, inspired by the What Is Music? podcast. It was time well spent. I’d recommend anyone do the same.