MANIC STREET PREACHERS: “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” (Epic)

The first salvo from the expectation-laden new album from the Manics pretty much takes up where Everything Must Go left off. A searingly dramatic slice of agit-pop, . . . Children . . . apparently deals with the Spanish Civil War and the Franco-philes. If this is a hit – and thanks to the panoramic strings and chugging guitar riff, it may well be – it could be the most stridently political pop song to hit drive-time radio since, ooh, Costello’s ‘Oliver’s Army’.