James Brown, Elvis, Kurt Cobain. When you listen to these guys, you’re listening to music from beyond the grave. Chances are though you’re not watching them live. But when the Manic Street Preachers performed their latest album, Journal for Plague Lovers, this is exactly what you got; live music from beyond the grave. The Welsh indie rock three-piece was a four piece until February 1995, when their troubled chief lyricist, Richey James Edwards, mysteriously disappeared near the Severn Bridge. Shortly before his vanishing act, he left a wealth of notes and lyrics with the other band members. Officially declared dead last year, the band has finally bought these lyrics to life, zombie fashion, in their latest album.
It certainly is a return to form for the Manics, in spirit a follow up of their former masterpiece, 1994’s Holy Bible. Richey’s intelligent, often disturbing, sometimes amusing lyricism has been weaved into a more punchy form of the Manioc’s stadium pop-rock, truer to the band’s punk roots. The trio burst onto the stage of the Dome with the pulsating opener, Peeled Apples, all explosive guitar hooks and yelling vocals. Front man James Dean Bradfield stole the show from the start, spinning, jumping and skipping about the place making up for bassist Nicky Wire’s lack of motion due to bad back (apart from back stretches performed mid song) and drummer Sean Moore’s technical skill and uniformity but lack of flair (his arms moved but the rest of him didn’t).
The band swiftly moved through the album, with radio (un)friendly Jackie Collin’s Existential Questions Time, breezier sounding but lyrically dark (‘If a married man fucks a Catholic/ And his wife dies without knowing/
Does that make him unfaithful’ and ‘Mummy, what’s a sex pistol?’) and Me and Stephen Hawking (‘We missed the sex revolution because we failed the physical’) the highlights. The first half of the gig finished with a poignant moment, Nicky explaining how the band never wanted to be a three piece, before introducing a ghostly second guitarist, shrouded in smoke at the back of the stage. Nicky took up the vocals for William’s Last Words (‘Wish me some luck before you wave goodbye to me/You’re the best friends I ever had’), effectively a suicide note from Richey. Nicky can’t sing for toffee, but it didn’t matter, the emotion shone through.
With the ghost of Richey exorcised, the second half of the gig, a selection of greatest hits, had a more celebratory mood with the crowd responding ecstatically. They were all there, Everything Must Go, If you tolerate this…, Your Love Alone is not Enough climaxing with You stole the sun from my heart and a stadium atmosphere squeezed into the Dome. If he wasn’t such a tormented fellow, I’m sure Richey would be smiling down on his mates.
Photos : Matthew Hodson – www.bitbin.co.uk
Words : Lewis Merdler
