"Trapped in a world a world made of, by, and for The Others.."

You can't turn the clock back. You can't go back to 1996 and pretend we're all twenty somethings anymore, where the future was unwritten and full of promise and hope that was never fufilled. We're all older now, and our lives have moved on, and yet we're drawn back to these songs, these musicians, the soundtrack to the age of being angry and discontent and still now, a decade on, we feel the same. The future is slightly dimmer, the open paths of the past now closed by time, but we are still the same people, yet different.

This is where the Manic Street Preachers exist in 2007. With a clear linearity between their young debut of 1992's "Generation Terrorists", and this years, mature, eloquently furious "Send Away The Tigers", the Manics have evolved, reshaped, reformed and come back to where they started - almost. Any journey changes you, and this journey has made them stronger.

Invigorated and revitalised, these middle-aged men play with a passion and vitality not seen since 1994 : the new material, which on record is lacklustre in parts, seems vital, livid, alive. The epic set (by Manics standards, 100 minutes and 25 songs) never outstays it's welcome : each song is dispatched with a necessary urgency.. The true sign of compelling music is the feeling, or at least the versimilitude, that these songs exist because they have to, because they need to, because the songs would exist if anyone were watching or not. The songs needed to be written and needed to be sung. Torn from the unconscious mind and expressed, like all great art does, the unknown secret language of the soul.

Opening with the taunt-turned-manifesto that is "You Love Us" (the very first song I saw the Manics perform in the flesh in 1992), the set is a breathless attack. The songs themselves, the reason why are we are here, after all, are delivered with merciless aplomb. The older material is still as good as it ever was : a scathing firey "Faster" is a microcosm of every last breath of defiance in every soul in the country. A statement of purity from the time when The Manics were the best band in the world. And in some ways, they still are : reflecting the integral core of what it is to be alive, to be trapped in a world that is not of your own making, to stand up for yourself in a world made of The Others.

The new material by comparison, can't help but pale. It tries valiantly, and falls only slightly short when matched against the rest of the set, which is a virtual greatest hits. A number of songs are resurrected for the first time in 14 or 15 years : a brilliant and desperate "Sleepflower", the nihilism of "Born To End" and "Condemned To Rock N Roll" and the first performance in many a year for the brilliant "Stay Beautiful" that turns a room in London into a heaving mass of pogoing kidults. That these songs remain current, loved, and as important now, sometimes a decade and a half after their birth is proof that sometimes, sadly, nothing changes in the human condition. This stuff may be old, but it still speaks to me in the searingly honest way that the Kaiser Chiefs never could. In a world where nothing means anything, the Manics will always mean something, and that is a victory in itself.

The performance comes to a close with the now-obligatory national anthem "A Design For Life", and all you have to ask yourself is, who remembers "Return Of The Mack" now? It's not that the song was only ever number 2, but that this song means more to  people than our actual national anthem. This is our battle cry, our self-appointed hymn. These are the songs we chose for ourselves, that speak to us, and that keep us sane. It's what music exists for. For the people.

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