4:30pm, ears firmly glued to the massive doors in the stinking alley beside Sydney’s Metro theatre. Inside, Manic Street Preachers are running a sound-check, and it seems vital to sit out here and take it all in, guessing each song as it’s played. It’s hard to distinguish the muffled vocals of James Dean Bradfield amongst the buzzing air conditioning units and all the vehicles racing down George Street. “Masses Against the Classes! I can hear Masses Against the Classes!” shouts an eager fanboy I’d met earlier. Personally, I can’t hear it. But I know that no matter what’s played tonight, I’m going to be blissfully thrown into a whirlwind of happiness. In the following four hours, a steady line begins to form, weaving its way down the urine drenched alley, groups both young and old, all eager, all devoted. The Manics have disgraced us with a cold and lonely eleven year absence, and all the happiness and sadness we’ve been dragging around for those years will be unleashed tonight in what will be a mind-blowing hour and a half.
In support of the Manics were a group of five Melbournians, otherwise known as Dead Actors Club . There’s been a surge in devotion to the eighties sound in recent music, and Dead Actors Club have jumped on to the bandwagon quite successfully. With a drum machine, synth, and even a loud speaker, they were able to ignore and obliterate “We want Manics!” chants, replacing them with the more appropriate rhythmic clapping and the occasional cheer. Embarrassingly enough, the band’s lead singer was a walking cliché, almost demanding criticism and mock in his total abandonment of originality and embracement of all that is ‘hip’. It’s quite fortunate he possesses such strong vocal abilites, it almost balances the evil with some good – his singing never faltered, and his performance was devoid of awkward testy pops and vocal strains. Dead Actors Club’s music was catchy in its brilliance, their songs thrived on intense climaxes and intricate guitar riffs. The synth wasn’t tackily thrust into the main melody of the songs, but existed quietly in the background. It seems as though the band understands and acknowledges their talent, and knows exactly how to use it. They play with the experience and brilliance of a group that understands its potential greatness.
Dead Actors Club unfortunately closed with the most boring song in their set, nearly eradicating all impressions they’d left on the cynical minds gathered in the Metro. Curtains quickly drawn, and the excitement seeped its way out of our veins and began to linger in the air of the venue. Manic Street Preachers are most accurately defined as a cult band, their fans are so scarcely stumbled upon that it becomes difficult to control obsession and devotion when they meet. And all this overload of emotion was finally put to use – curtains opened to reveal a stage decorated with teddy bears, feather boas, and a Welsh flag – Manic Street Preachers walk on to the stage like no-one’s watching, and “You Love Us” has the audience seizing under the glare of rock and roll. After twenty hard years scrutinising the culture we take for granted, destroying naivety and ignorance, the Manics have nothing left to prove and they perform with a well crafted carelessness.
Bradfield’s aging has clearly hindered his ability to accurately remember the lyrics he’d put to music, but not his ability to dance around the stage assaulting his guitar with the violence of his brilliant riffs in “Motorcycle Emptiness” and “No Surface All Feeling”. The structure of Manic’s songs leave room for powerful guest vocals provided by the audience, “We don’t want your fucking love!”, and there’s a quiet understanding that although the Manic’s music seems to attract only the lonely, we’re not really all that lonely. A predictable dedication to the greatest country in the world with “Australia” and the unfortunate song selection of “Your Love Alone is Not Enough” dilute the emotional depth of other songs on the setlist, “Faster”, “This is Yesterday”, and “The Everlasting”, in a kind gesture to prevent tears and awkward intenseness that would only offend the performance.
Manic fucking Street Preachers. No language, no vocabulary, no human could accurately recount the performance without coming across as retardedly obsessed or brimming with sensitivity and unwarranted emotion. The music is delivered heavily, it’s received as such and interpreted as such. Although the performance could have done with a bit of Journal for Plague Loversand more Gold Against the Soul, Nicky Wire’s seedy grins and glittery campness soften the blow and melt women’s (and men’s) hearts. Sean Moore’s drum playing face reinforces the amount of effort the Manics put into their music – the performance was not outrageous, not revolutionary or crazy, but it was authentic. Manic Street Preachers are three middle-aged men working hard to sustain what they’ve spent the past twenty years moulding, and they’ve pretty much succeeded in satisfying the gaping hole in our lives we don’t quite know what to do with.
