Manic Street Preachers, Shepherd's Bush Empire: rock's great survivors remain refreshingly urgent

Telegraph

20-04-2025

By their own early plans, Manic Street Preachers shouldn't exist in 2025. In the flush of youth, frontman James Dean Bradfield once asserted that the band's 1992 debut album, Generation Terrorists, would be their sole offering to the world. 'We'll release one double album that goes to Number One worldwide,' he declared at the time. 'One album, then we split. If it doesn't work, we split anyway. Either way, after one album, we're finished.'
Thirty-three years later – and 30 since the disappearance of iconic guitarist Richey Edwards– the Manics are still here. Not only that, they've endured without becoming many of the things they might once have hated. Bassist Nicky Wire's leopard-print gilet may be the only sartorial nod to the glam look of old tonight, but on their recent Critical Thinking album – their 15th – their signature smart rock, sardonic lyricism and occasional bursts of nihilism sound refreshingly urgent.
At Shepherd's Bush Empire on Saturday night, a stone's throw from the street they lived on when they first got going ('This is a spiritual place for us. The Bushranger used to do the best tuna melts I've ever tasted,' announced Wire) the Welsh legends were just as much about the nostalgia that comes naturally with age as they were asserting their continued relevance.
Opening with new song Decline And Fall, with Bradfield belting out its thundering chorus, it was a reminder that, on a musical front, this has never been much of a problem for the Manics. They are a band blessed with an ability to imbue their music with a romance and ruggedness of real life in a way that vanishingly few others can. The constant quotes and literature references on the giant screen behind them also reminded, however showily, that, Pulp and Radiohead aside, they offered something more intellectually stimulating than their '90s peers, unafraid of challenging their audience to dig deeper.
They've still got a lyrical spike as well. Taking the mic for the first-ever airing of Critical Thinking, Wire may have, endearingly, been reading from hastily-scrawled notes on what appears to be a large envelope ('I'd like to freestyle it, but I can't remember the f---king words'), but the bite of the song's shopping list of online self-help slogans ('It's okay to not be okay/Live your best life/Be kind/Have some empathy') were perfectly instructive of how the Manics digest and prod at the world in 2025.
If it's a look-back you seek, there was the enormous single Australia, a particularly stirring A Design For Life, and evergreen mega-ballad Motorcycle Emptiness. For a demo of how well all this works pared back, Bradfield took to the stage alone mid-set, for a beautiful acoustic interlude of Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky and This Sullen Welsh Heart, featuring Catherine Anne Davies, AKA opener The Anchoress. And a closing pairing of classics Motown Junk and If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next arrived to predictably rowdy response.
Should The Manics have lasted this long? A younger version would have said absolutely not. Sometimes, though, it's oh so right to be wrong.