CONCERT REVIEW: Manic Street Preachers / Catatonia, Manchester Arena
- Tim Kennedy
Catatonia's Cerys ambles onto the gargantuan stage of the MEN as if arriving at the pub. Cloaked in a bizarre dressing gown reaching to the floor and in a floppy fur helmet with earflaps, she seems unconcerned at the adulation of the crowd - many whom are clad in or waving Welsh flags. Not that this is a purely Welsh affair - most here hail from around the north of England.
Cerys trades banter with the baying hordes then launches into a set derived largely from the hugely successful International Velvet. The band are not a great technical unit, but they serve as a reasonable platform on which Cerys can work her seductive charms. For she is a star. She is totally at home onstage, slouching around, or skipping about when the mood takes her. Her tunes are strong enough to make any shortcomings of the band marginal. Her lyrics are complex, whilst avoiding pretentiousness. Cerys has a happy muse and whilst she seems a tad drunk at times, it makes for a thoroughly enjoyable show, and perhaps some of us bloody English can feel a little Welsh envy. When she does her solo acoustic spot there is an unfeasibly warm and chummy atmosphere.
The Manics arrive with considerably more lights and drama. The set is based around the Design For Life album, with highlights from the latest offering This Is My Truth Now Tell Me Yours. "Design For Life" and "Kevin Carter" are still the great stadium rockers, and "Everything Must Go" is particularly incandescent.
As always James is the dynamo, stage-left these days, punching out those superb power chords that drive the Manics along. Nicky is stage-right in combat pants instead of the dress that was his favoured outfit on the last tour, and waves his bass around like an overgrown stick insect doing a Peter Hook impression. Sean is largely hidden behind his drum kit, providing the backup for the guitar assault.
The current album promotional material has looked a bit pompous, with much waving of the word TRUTH. The band still come across as they always did however, albeit without the slight figure of Richey James at stage-left.
The new material live still displays the essential rock bombast that you'd expect from the Manics, and if there is a slight element of mid seventies prog rock in "I'm Not Working", as if to offset this the band launch straight into "Motown Junk" - the Manics at their most punky.
Earlier material is also on show. We get "La Tristesse Durera"
- a very fine version - from Gold Against The Soul. From The Holy Bible we are treated to the excellent "She Is Suffering" and a blistering "Revol"."You Love Us" - one of their early singles, and from a time when the very opposite was true - is the inevitable encore, and Nicky sees fit to get his rope out and do a bit of skipping on his speaker stacks.
Truly the Manics are the only true UK stadium band of their generation, but they manage to do it with such mad integrity that even the Richey fans in the crowd cannot but join in the general adulation.
