Twilight of the Gods ; POP

By JOHN AIZLEWOOD

AT YESTERDAY afternoon’s awards ceremony, the NME anointed Manic Street Preachers as “godlike geniuses” and invited them to headline yesterday evening’ s Big Gig. Now, in some far-off parallel universe Manic Street Preachers may be “godlike” and “geniuses”. In this one they’re occasionally brilliant, sometimes mundane, mostly tired rockers. And they can no more summon the masses to fill the O2 than they can garner interest in their current album.

However, support act Kaiser Chiefs could sell out the O2 as surely as they filled Earls Court in December. The imbalance made for a most curious evening, where, shortly after Kaiser Chiefs had played to pandemonium, Manic Street Preachers played to a rapidly emptying arena and were not accorded an encore.

If Kaiser Chiefs were bemused by their silly billing, they held their tongues and, before the opening Everyday I Love You Less And Less was over, singer Ricky Wilson had hurled himself into the crowd. Soon, he would venture halfway towards the back of the hall, only to be showered with beer (a soggy feature of a sloppily stewarded event) and inadvertently confirm to the audience that his undergarments were white.

If the satire of The Angry Mob was lost in the hullabaloo, the hits still oozed air-punching joy, while a couple of new songs, one of which may have been titled Never Missed A Beat, suggested the game is far from up.

“We’re very happy Taffs today,” chirped Manic Street Preachers singer James Dean Bradfield.

Typically, they delighted and frustrated in equal measures. They veered wildly between moments of wonder, chiefly the still- astounding Motorcycle Emptiness, plus a genuinely impassioned A Design For Life and the mighty You Stole The Sun From My Heart; horrible shouting on the hopeless You Love Us and ideas that almost worked, such as a band of pipers, guest slots from The Enemy’s Tom Clarke and Cerys Matthews and a shaky cover of Rihanna’s Umbrella, during which bassist Nicky Wire swapped his trousers for a short skirt to reveal a pair of undeniably fetching pins. Fetching, but not genius….

(c) 2008 Evening Standard; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.