By Owen Pinnell
The Manic Street Preachers’ performance at the Brixton Academy on Saturday was utterly assured and – dare I say it – almost polished. Yet the highlights of the night came when their vulnerability was most obvious.
Nicky, James and Sean, now on their 11th album, will always find it hard to represent the full gamut of their career in a single night. But they certainly tried: this was a crowd-pleasing show, and more recent material was peppered with tracks from the Holy Bible and Everything Must Go.
In some ways this was a drawback: lyrical and musical subtlety was at times sacrificed for familiar sing-along choruses. The strongest moments came when the Manics performed their more recent, lesser known Rewind the Film tracks.
The title track, accompanied by footage from Welsh bingo and music halls, is an emotional homage to the band’s roots in South Wales. On the album version the vocals are performed by Richard Hawley, but James Dean Bradfield proved he was more than capable of pulling off the required baritone.
Unlike their well-honed hits, this material felt raw and emotional. It was clear that the commitment and intensity that distinguishes them still burns. The idea of exile – for the Manics, an integral part of their defiant identity – came to the fore, and perhaps could have been the unifying theme the night lacked.
Another highlight was “No Surface All Feeling”, heavy on the reverb and featuring a searing guitar solo. Bradfield’s furious words summed up the Manics’ conundrum: “What’s the point in always looking back/when all you see is more and more junk?”
This is a band who are forever transfixed by their past. And yet it is in dealing with this past – in reshaping it and breaking their own rules – that they are at their strongest.
Having lost Richey, sold out arenas, and, above all, survived, the danger for the band now is that they rest on their laurels. But from the glimpses of brilliance on show in Brixton, this seems unlikely. While they can never recapture the anarchy of their early career, they are still too visionary to be consigned to the middle-aged mediocrity of their peers.
