The Return of the Manics

Richey James Edwards disappeared off the face of the earth in 1995, leaving behind an abandoned car and no corpse. It was only months after his band, Manic Street Preachers, had achieved an unlikely artistic and critical peak with its third album, a white hot collision of jagged post-punk and scorching metal called The Holy Bible.

Edwards had catalogued his epic battles with depression, alcoholism and anorexia on The Holy Bible, while also casting a profoundly moral gaze on a world well past its critical mass of human evil and suffering. As the band's centre of gravity -- he wrote most of their dense and brilliant lyrics, spearheaded their artwork, and generally steered his three bandmates through a number of subversive and thrilling incarnations -- the sudden loss of Edwards looked like the end of the Manics. Instead, after a period of grieving, and with the blessing of his family, they produced their second masterpiece, Everything Must Go.

Here, the Welsh band hit upon a formula that would carry it through the next 10 years or so, producing luxurious, hook-laden stadium rockers with passionate and intelligent lyrics. It was a breathtaking coup, not least of all because Edwards' tragic end was folded so thoughtfully into a mystique already well beyond average. "And I just hope that you can forgive us," sang vocalist James Dean Bradfield on the Spectorish title track, "but everything must go."

The Manics established themselves as superstars in the UK with Everything Must Go. The law of diminishing returns made their subsequent records less essential, but with the release of Journal for Plague Lovers last May, the Manics have actually -- in their 23rd year -- produced a third masterpiece.

When Richey Edwards was finally pronounced officially dead last November, the band returned to a portfolio of lyrics he "bequeathed" to them, in the words of bassist Nicky Wire. And thus, in the opening track, "Peeled Apples," we once again hear Edwards' signature marriage of the personal and the political, struck through with his natural poetics, humour, spleen, and a glam-punk seditionary sense of style. "I impersonated a shopwork dummy," sings Bradfield. "The Levi jean will always be stronger than the Uzi..."

In the unstoppable title track, Bradfield wails, "Only a god can bruise / Only a god can soothe / Only a god reserves the right / To forgive those that revile him..." Bear in mind that these words, as impressive as they are on their own, will be chanted by some 12,000 people the next time the Manics headline at Wembley Arena. Oasis it isn't.

They've never been more than a cult on this side of the pond, but there was more than just a rustle of excitement when the Manics announced their first North American tour for a decade last week. Perhaps the band is finally getting its due over here. In any event, and because nothing is ever straightforward with Manic Street Preachers, and everything this band does seems loaded with significance, they'll climb onstage at Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom on September 22 -- exactly 10 years to the day that they last played here.