Manic Street Preachers - Shepherd's Bush Empire, 24 Sep
Yes hello, I’m not dead or anything. I was going to apologise for not posting for a while, but apparently us bloggers aren’t supposed to do that , so I suggest you accept what you’re given and be grateful that I can be arsed to write anything at all. (There’s a really good article somewhere that collates such “sorry, I was busy!” posts which I can’t find, but I’m not going to apologise for that either.) Anyway, we got to our seats in time to catch the end of Public Service Broadcasting . Stock footage on a projector screen is accompanied by surprisingly direct and jaunty instrumental rock, as played by one man on guitar-slash-laptop dressed as Matt Smith from Doctor Who, and a drummer who seems to have gone for an IT Crowd-era Richard Ayoade vibe. They talk to the audience through a Stephen Hawking style voice machine. The carefully assembled blend of vintage and modern is all very now , or at least is trying awfully hard to be. This may be a crap photo, but at least it'