Manic Street Preachers – Newport Centre, Wales 21/08/08

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Tearing up the remains of their theatrical entrance music, the Manic Street Preachers began their Reading and Leeds Festival warm-up gig at Newport Centre with a louder-than-King-Kong-on-a-bad-day version of 1994′s ‘Faster’. Over a decade since they last played at the sports-hall-come-music-arena, James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore appeared, charged with the energy of fifty Duracell rabbits and the same youthful spirit as when they last killed silence in their home county.

Packing in a pitch-perfect set, featuring both old material and tracks from their more recent albums, the Welsh heroes served up a sumptuous smorgasbord of musical treats to keep the timeline of attending fans bouncing the soles off their sweaty shoes for almost two hours. Songs that have gained a permanent place in their setlist over the years, such as ‘You Stole The Sun’ and ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, were polished off to a tee almost effortlessly. Stirring two covers into the song-cauldron, the Manics aired their toughened-up rendition of Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ and Nirvana’s ‘Pennyroyal Tea’. The latter, according to Wire, was a favourite of Richie Edwards, the band’s never-to-be-forgotten guitarist and the hand behind their bold and honest lyrics on their first albums, who went missing in 1995.

For a vertically challenged man who’s knocking forty, James Dean Bradfield could certainly project. He stormed through a distorted ‘Masses Against The Classes’ with falsetto “aah”s as Moore, who was hidden at the back of the stage, pounded the drums to within an inch of their life. Bradfield continued to parade the band’s enthusiasm as he spun around with his white Gibson during a crisply cut ‘Your Love Alone…’, spontaneously slapped himself on the head during ‘Send Away The Tigers’ and had the occasional joint pogo session with Wire, who beamed a proud smile from the crowd’s yell-every-lyric response to ‘Design For Life’.

The intensity of the set seemed to take a slight nap as the two Marmite songs , ‘Little Baby Nothing’ and ‘La Tristessa Durera’, were played back to back. Despite the majority of the crowd failing to take up Bradfield’s offer to sing the first verse of ‘La Tristessa Durer’a for him, the band continued to give it their all to nail every note on the head.

‘You Love Us’ burst into motion with a scissor-kick from Wire, who then flaunted his feather boa collection as he thrust his microphone stand into the air. Throughout the first verse of the tongue-in-cheek anthem, Bradfield’s muted guitar strings seemed to be gagging to escape into the full-throttled power chords of the chorus. The fiery period of angst was then dampened down as the band sailed through melancholic ‘Ocean Spray’ and the mechanical reverberations humming from ‘Of Walking Abortion’.

A short solo acoustic slot was taken by Bradfield, who plucked out the theme tune to BBC’s Grandstand and ‘The Everlasting’. Rejoined by his band mates and his Gibson guitar, the Manics finished off the night with their last single, ‘Autumn Song’, followed by a pulsing stab at ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’. The standing ovation the band received stressed just how on-fire the Manic Street Preachers were. This gig was more than just a Reading warm-up; it was a blisteringly hot insight into how the Manics have stayed true to their roots, maintained their angst and still have a growing fanbase after all these years down the line. Let’s hope they stay that way.

Photographs by Alex.