Manic Street Preachers, O2 Arena - review - Music - Arts

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Bolstered by an additional guitarist and keyboardist, and playing on a stage with more foliage than most people's back gardens, the trio began with the fist-pumping indie-rock of You Stole The Sun From My Heart.

If bassist and rent-a-quote Nicky Wire was the visual focus - as men who wear hoodie-and-pencil-skirt ensembles tend to be - James Dean Bradfield was the musical one. Whether wrestling proggish riffs from his guitar during Autumnsong or bellowing out The Everlasting's skyscraping chorus, his enviable gifts were on display throughout.

No Manics gig is complete, of course, without mention of Richie Edwards, their guitarist who disappeared in 1995. The impassioned punk of Faster and Revol (the latter about "group sex and the Kremlin", no less) were a reminder of his inimitable songwriting style, though the Manics remain a great band without him.

Fellow Welshmen Gruff Rhys cameoed on Let Robeson Sing, as images of Cuba flashed on the giant screen behind, before The Cardigans' Nina Persson appeared for the anthemic Your Love Is Not Enough.

If there was a slight feeling of having to rush through the set, that's a forgivable by-product of having so many songs worth hearing. Maybe pop and politics can mix, after all.

Manic Street Preachers
O2 Arena
Millennium Way
London
SE10 0AX