Public Service Broadcasting 23/10/2017

The support were called Palace and they didn't grab the attention apart from their penultimate song and the guitarist stage right was quite good. PSB came on as a much bigger show than the last times we saw them. Now they had a core band of four people plus a three strong horn section, a further three strong female vocalists/accordionist who came on for one track and eight video screens providing the visual context for the music and narration and further props such as pit wheels turning and miners' lamps descending. They started of course with a couple of tracks from 'Every Valley' before launching into 'Public Service Broadcasting' itself. In fact I was expecting a full recital of the album but the show was much more mixed than that with a lot of stuff from 'The Race for Space' which I particularly enjoyed. The screen visuals were brilliant - lots of sharp cutting, interference and interesting images. The best was saved for the encore when they brought on James Dean Bradfield to sing the song that he sings on the album. That just rounded off a brilliant set. They alluded to the break that the Manics gave them as a support act which is when we first saw them. They did the Everest track after that as a final flourish. They absolutely are different to most bands but they are very good at what they do. I expect there will be imitators.