Sometimes you admire music more when you're away from it.

In the '90s, the Manic Street Preachers were ascendant, both creatively, with the gash of 1994's The Holy Bible, and universally, with stadiums and records outselling the ones before, peaking with 1998's triple-platinum This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours, all while, for the most part, holding onto a reputation as Welsh situationist heroes against an encroaching culture of leisure music.

Back then, we didn't care that much.

We'd always enjoyed The Manics, but found it consistently difficult to latch onto them in the middle of a decade that was already heaving with sounds, brilliance bursting from everyplace. We'd first been exposed to their albums by a friend from across the country, who raved over them in letters and over the phone, periodically sending us discreet cassettes, and who eventually asked us to help out with material for her fanzine, one of the first times we ever wrote about music. Back then, if The Manics were interesting and important, we surrounded ourselves with so much else, not because it was wrong but because it was easy and just as right.

Only when the praise and the crowds died down did we go back and see what we'd missed.

Our reaction was the same as it was this week at Neumo's, where the band kick-started their return to the U.S., almost to the day, in over a decade. Their reason is to promote their latest, this year's Journal For Plague Lovers, based off of the writings of lost guitarist Richey Edwards and backed by a new, uneasy musical grace and no singles. It's here where, the whole night, we kept waiting for a song, any song, we didn't like.

In front of us for the first time, lead-singer James Dean Bradfield reminds us of a militaristic Sam Tyler from BBC's 'Life On Mars'. Drummer Sean Moore seems to have no ego. Bassist, and chief lyricist, Nicky Wire clashes with glam, wearing a white suit-jacket and black eye-shadow, and his sides are flanked by a speaker-stack of stuffed animals and a microphone-stand swirled around with a long, multi-colored feather boa.

Then there are the highlights.

The opener, 1992's "Motorcycle Emptiness". Bradfield doing Nina Persson's bit for 2007's "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough". The drum-machine of "You Stole The Sun From My Heart". An unexpected cover of Camper Van Beethoven's "Take The Skinheads Bowling". Wire leaping about, singing even when it's not his part, as if he's enjoying all this as much as the rest of us.

Halfway through, one of them says, "Richey never made it to Seattle, but I bet he would've loved it. Anywhere that's dark and rainy and pretentious." Adding, after another song, "And I mean pretentious in a good way."

"La Tristesse Durera," "This Joke Sport Severed," "Let Robeson Sing".

In a recent interview, Wire praised "Patience" by Take That.

This is not an ironic choice. It's the greatest comeback single in history. If Neil Young had written it, people would be calling it a masterpiece. I've always liked Take That, too. They looked so brilliant back in the day and did everything right, but this is something else. Gary Barlow is a genius; I won't have anyone argue against him. When Alex Turner slagged off Take That at the 2006 Q awards for getting an award, I nearly lost it. James was grabbing me by the arm, saying: "Don't lose it, Nicky." You get so many alternative bands banging on about how to make perfect pop, and this kicks all their arses.

There's a girl at the back with androgynous hair and colored tape on her face, dancing on her own the entire night, in her ecstatic world of one. She's The Spirit Of The Manics, we think. Still alive. Even after these years.

"Faster," from The Holy Bible, is madness.

"A Design For Life," the finale, breaks our heart.

It's all been a long time coming.

We know we're lucky to hear these songs now that we care and before it was too late, but we also wonder if our lives would've been any different if we'd let them get around to us when we were at the right age.

There's an uncomfortable sincerity about the band, which is difficult for a cynic.

We realize, when we listen to The Manics, live or on record, we listen to something we never had, a different adolescence, one that paid a different sort of attention when the time was ripe, that would've gotten to know people like our friend better, chasing through subways and jumping into cars in the dark, riding around the city together with band t-shirts and the top down, listening to pencil-scribbled cassettes and laughing at plans for the future.

Because there's only a small window to get into things like this, and we've already missed it.

Photo by Phil Rose.