If International Blue – the first to surface from the Manic Street Preachers’ forthcoming thirteenth full-length, Resistance Is Futile – represented ‘a hexing return to form’, then in the aptly polychromic Distant Colours, they’ve evidence this rekindled brilliance is quite likely to last the course of that aforesaid record. And while James Dean Bradfield may quizzically enquire, come a sparky chorus flecked with flickers of Together In Electric Dreams, “Are we livin’ in the past?” the Manics are very much forging a future that few would have foreseen. Sure, its wedding of introspective verse with explosive chorus is something that has long since been something of a stock-in-trade (Postcards from a Young Man immediately springs to mind), while productionally speaking, its shiny sheen proves redolent of their remunerative late ’90s acme. But as he then goes on to raspily probe, “Why d’you say that you love me?/ And tell me what I wanna hear”, for the Manics’ unconditionally adoring hordes, as with International Blue before it, Distant Colours is all we could’ve hoped for and more.

Resistance Is Futile is available from April 13^th via Columbia / Sony Music, while the Manic Street Preachers play The SSE Arena on May 4^th.