T in the Park review: Manic Street Preachers

IT CAN'T be easy being the Manic Street Preachers. Arriving at the start of the 1990s, skinny, angry and full of promises to split up after the first album, it was nigh-on impossible to imagine these self-style Generation Terrorists thought they would still be here two decades down the line.

Well, here we are: it's 2011, and the Manics are still very much with us. In fact, as beanpole bass player Nicky Wire points out, they played the first T in the Park, which gives the whole event a certain poignancy. But if you close your eyes, things haven't changed that much: James Dean Bradfield's voice still has the paint-stripper strength of old and, visually, even if Wire has abandoned the dresses and eye- liner, he still wields the bass like a scimitar and scissor-kicks with the best of them.

And so they charge through the hits with enthusiasm: You Love Us, Everything Must Go, Motorcycle Emptiness, Faster. Each is attacked ruthlessly by the band, with the support of an audience who sing every line. It's impossible to deny the vitality of the group.

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