The greatest Welsh band ever played a sell-out show in Wolverhampton on Sunday, Steve Beauchampé reports.

Manic Street Preachers, Wolverhampton Civic Hall, Sunday, April 6th 2014.

A year or so ago, following the release of a career spanning singles compilation CD/DVD, the Manic Street Preachers appear to have contemplated disbanding. 27 years since forming in the South Wales town of Blackwood, there was a feeling that the leftist political and social ideologies they stood for resonated far less with today’s generation than with their own and that after 11 studio albums, they might not have anything left worth saying.

Fortunately they didn’t break up and resurgent, last autumn, the band released Rewind the Film, their least rock-orientated to date, promising that a more guitar-based follow up would be released this year.

So to Sunday beneath the art deco ceiling of (surely) everyone’s favourite large West Midlands concert venue, As the lights dimmed to the roars of anticipation from the near 3,000 faithful, a video screen flashed messages that in essence urged us to look forward, not back. Sloganeering has always been a key part of how the Manics deliver their messages and the reason for tonight’s theme would become apparent as the gig progressed.

Once onstage the band, James Dean Bradfield (vocals/guitar), Nicky Wire (bass) and Sean Moore (drums), had the luxury of a substantial catalogue of songs to choose from. Inevitably selections from their most recent LP featured prominently. The album drew heavily on guest vocalists (including Richard Hawley and Cate Le Bon), sometimes sharing with Bradfield, sometimes not, but for this tour Bradfield performs all the singing duties on these songs.

After opening with Faster, You Stole The Sun From My Heart (from 2008s Send Away The Tigers album) and Motorcycle Emptiness soon follow, the video screen now showing footage of the Manics in their glam punk pomp, including then guitarist, lyricist (with Wire) and chief agent provocateur Ritchie Edwards, missing since March 1995 when his car was found abandoned near the Severn Bridge.

Remarking on the audiences’ particularly raucous response to this classic early song, Bradfield compliments them with the words: “Thanks for coming out on a Sunday. Thanks for making it seem like a Saturday.”

I doubt there’s a band that venerates a former member as the Manics do Ritchie. But then, the Manic Street Preachers without Ritchie is akin to the Beatles without John Lennon and his disappearance spurred his band mates to the epic 1996 album Everything Must Go. The title track and Enola/Alone remain sing-along favourites as evidenced tonight, whilst Archives of Pain from The Holy Bible is dedicated to Ritchie, his presence forever on stage with them.

Tsunami, (It’s Not War) Just TheEnd of Love and (I Miss The) Tokyo Skyline also feature, as does This Sullen Welsh Heart, this latter one of two songs performed solo on acoustic guitar by Bradfield, When his cohorts return, Wire has undergone a costume change. Yet where once this might have involved a dress, and certainly a feather boa, these days it’s merely a new shirt and white trousers. Even so, Wire is happy to assert that he’s: “still got the best hair of any bass player in this country.”  

The band’s two chart topping singles, the delicious If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next and the always spiky Masses Against The Classes, are counterbalanced by a brace of new – and strong sounding – songs; Futurology (the title track of the new album – hence the video messages that preceded the band’s arrival) and Europa Geht Durch Mich.  

The show winds up to its climax with storming interpretations of You Love Us, Show Me The Wonder. Motown Junk (their first single, released in 1991 just around a couple of years after the Manics had enjoyed a six-month Monday night residency at Digbeth’s Barrel Organ) and to finish, A Design For Life, sung with gusto by audience and group alike. No need for an encore after that; still a great song, still a great band.      

Photos Charles Chan.