Manic Street Preachers 14/12/10

This gig was postponed from October and featured British Sea Power in support. I came to them (BSP) cold and I liked the line up which saw three guitars and a violin on the opening tracks together with bass and drums. They played with energy and they had their moments which for me were the tracks that had some melodic content and a couple of songs that were reminiscent of sub-Springsteen riffs. Otherwise it was a bit uninspired, maybe even slightly anodine. There was a lot of energetic strumming but I felt they needed a bit of imagination to turn their technical expertise into something memorable.

Manics launched straight into some crowd favourites and in fact didn't really linger at any point in the gig on tracks from their excellent new album 'Postcards from a Young Man'. Despite some awful watching conditions (peering between peoples heads)the band played a selection from their whole career at some pace and it was all good to hear. James Dean Bradfield showed that he is a really good guitarist live and in fact he sounded better live than on record. The odd thing for me was that the audience was very enthusiastic and voluble down in the standing area but there was an inverse correlation between the songs I thought were outstanding and the audience's enthusiasm. For me 'This is Yesterday' and 'Faster' from 'The Holy Bible' were outstanding as well as stuff from the new album and also 'If you tolerate this'. Another highlight for me was the first of James' two solo acoustic numbers 'You Stole the Sun from My Heart'. I'm guessing the audience was brought up on late 90's manics rather than the earlier stuff. The band also played a Wham cover 'Last Christmas' - slightly strange even though it is nearly Christmas but I can say it was a lot better than Wham doing it. I was glad to see that the Manics hadn't lost their enthusiasm and energy from when I saw them in 92. I would have preferred a better environment to hear them in but maybe the two things don't go together.