Manic Street Preachers: Guitar Power

A central rule of entertainment is that the show must go on--even when one of the guiding lights in your band is nowhere to be found.

That’s a hard fact of life for the English pop-rock band the Manic Street Preachers, whose guitarist-lyricist Richey James disappeared while battling depression in 1995 and has not been heard from since. The remaining trio--guitarist James Dean Bradfield, drummer Sean Moore and bassist Nicky Wire--had a hard decision: to wait, hoping that their childhood buddy would one day reappear, or continue with the music that had garnered the Preachers more than two dozen Top 40 British singles since 1990.

But during their electrifying performance Thursday night at the Troubadour--following an impressive opening set by the female quartet Penny Dreadfuls--the Preachers laid out a sermon of riveting guitar and polished thump that had the sold-out venue hopping for more than an hour. As they went through the raucous mix of songs from their latest LP, “Everything Must Go,” it was almost scary to think of what the band would be like with James.

Bradfield is an agile presence with a forthright voice who also happens to be one heck of a guitarist. Through driven versions of “Kevin Carter,” and “Enola/Alone,” the music--even more frenetic than the recorded versions--proved mesmerizing.

But like Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, Bradfield also proved he could reduce the sound and still rock. The evening’s best music, in fact, occurred when the rest of the band left the stage and Bradfield, armed only with a simple acoustic, did gentle, soulful versions of “Small Black Flowers” and “Raindrops.”