Manic Street Preachers, Manchester Arena. 28th April 2018

Last time I saw Manics was at my favourite venue (Albert Hall) playing my favourite album (The Holy Bible). Tonight I’m sad to say was quite different. Arenas are quite frankly shite and granted Manics have more than enough oomph to fill these cavernous spaces, but compared to the smaller venues, the atmosphere suffers so much it ruins the performance. Out of the gates with International Blue (great new song) and Motorcycle Emptiness (need I explain), it started well. Follow that with a few more new tracks though and the crowd was lost. A lacklustre rendition of Little Baby Nothing didn’t help and although things picked up for You Stole the Sun... it’s hardly my favourite Manics era. Kevin Carter and Tolerate improve things immensely, as does Nicky’s banter about fuckin up the start of songs in order to facilitate a costume change. James doing Everything Must Go acoustic was great and even the crowd of pissed idiots sounded good in full singalong accompaniment. It got even better with a call and response version of Faster with again James doing the honours, while Nicky took care of that aforementioned costume change. Sure enough Wire returned to the stage as You Love Us threatens to take the roof off, proving to be the highlight of the set. Some of the new stuff like Hold Me Like A Heaven does land well, but it’s definitely stuff like Slash n Burn that sounds best tonight.