Back in 1992 when British guitar pop music was largely being drowned out by the sound of American grunge rock, it took two young bands – one from South Wales, the other from West Sussex – to restore a dash of glamour, artiness and refreshing outspokenness to the UK charts. Thirty-two years later the Manic Street Preachers and Suede are still proudly fighting their corner with a fierce intelligence and zest, producing records that are comparable with ones they made in their youth but now filtered with a poignancy imbued by age and greater life experience. Advertisement Advertisement Did you know with a Digital subscription to Yorkshire Post, you can get access to all of our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more.
Following a co-headlining tour of the United States last year, they’re back sharing a stage for a series of summer shows, including this sold-out date as part of Millennium Square’s Sounds of the City series. It falls to the Manic Street Preachers to open tonight’s proceedings with a triple salvo of crowd-pleasers – You Love Us, Everything Must Go and Motorcycle Emptiness – that instantly induce mass sing-alongs and nods of approval for singer James Dean Bradfield’s fiery lead guitar playing. Acknowledging a key Manics trope of finding beauty in despair, he jokingly introduces The Theme From M*A*S*H as “one of the most miserable cover versions of all time, but somehow we get joy from all this”.
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