A Greatest Hits Tour is something Westlife would do. A full stop. An ending. The last gasp from the creatively bankrupt. A clearing of the decks and a retirement plan.

Retrospectives are always controversial. A time to look back. A time to reflect. A time to celebrate and a time to rest on your laurels. A time to neither run from, or rush to, your past. A time to acknowledge. A time to make a quick buck before Christmas?

If you’re not careful though, retrospectives are full stops. Endings. Last gasps from the creatively bankrupt. A clearing of the decks and a retirement plan.

Taken to soulless, enormous sheds then, The Manics give us their final, Greatest Hits Cash-In. Except... it isn't. Dispel your cynicism. It's not some cabaret band performing stadium karaoke. But a timely reminder that the currency of the Manics goes beyond such vagaries as time, place, and government. These songs cut through to the very core of what it is to be alive.

It doesn’t have to be grey. It doesn’t have to be dull. It doesn’t have to be stupid, drab, unimaginative swill thrown out by workmen with guitars. It can be so much more.

And so, with every single song in the Manics set coming from their enviable canon of 30 singles, there’s little chance of them being, well, bad. Great big slabs of aspirational, literate, rock, raise-your-fist-and-yell geetar solos, and a dash of brilliance.

So no problem with their determinedly retrospective set that exhumes long-ignored classics, but ignores their latest album, “Know Your Enemy” in favour of the “Forever Delayed” hits set. Songs that pluck out thoughts you haven’t yet had, thoughts that we hide in fear and that we only dimly feel. "I don’t wanna be a man” ( - Life Becoming A Landslide)

The problem isn't so much the Manics. Who've aged. Maybe not gracefully, but they certainly not trying to capture, or recapture, past glories. They're not pretending to be something they're not. They're neither heroes or villans, but instead trying to exist in a place where they neither bomb the past or fear the future.

Let's face it. If you don't think "Motown Junk" is one of the best songs ever written you need a defibrillator. Songs that pluck out thoughts you haven't yet had, thoughts that we hide in fear and that we only dimly feel. We live in fear of our feelings : the Manics take their raw thoughts and splash them out on a huge 100-decibel canvas. And quote William Burroughs. Genius with guitars.

Even now, people fail to see the central line that runs through all the Manics work. The people on stage will not sit down, will not just dumbly accept things the way they are, who always question, always explore, who never sit dead passive and accept. Even if that's what most of the cattle in the audience want from their Arena Rock, the Manics always demand MORE from life than the slim ambitions we are fed.

The band who used to mean everything, who wanted to change the world, still want to. Still want to make the world a better place. Still want to storm the barricades of civilisation, throw open the doors of perception to the burger-eating, coke-swilling, herds and give their Arena Rock some class, some genius, some beauty in a world full of rubble and shit. Still beautiful.

Flaubert - "Be regular and ordinary in your life so you can be violent and original in your work."

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