TONY CLAYTON-LEAreviews Manic Street Preachers at the Olympia, Dublin.

There are certain items you can definitively check-list at a Manic Street Preachers gig: feather boas on the mic stands, strobe lighting, members of the audience wearing leopard-print clothing, a Welsh flag conspicuously draped, Jenny Saville artwork as a backdrop, and band member Nicky Wire wearing just the right shade of eyeliner. Such staples have, over the years, occasionally sidelined them to the point where they once began to mean little to a lot of people – anathema, surely, to a band that originally started out in order to make a difference.

And yet, despite the usual pitfalls of being around for 20 years (complacency, apathy, tragedy, exultation, inner peace and turmoil) the band have managed to claw back the kind of visceral excitement and dignity that made them such a vibrant proposition at the beginning.

Thursday night's show was a case in point. The set was split into two distinct sections; the first showcased from start to finish their latest album, Journal for Plague Lovers, and the second, following a 10-minute break, highlighted selections from their very impressive back catalogue – not so much a Greatest Hits as a Best Moments segment.

The biggest surprise is the cut of the band's jib – now pushing 40, and plugging a record that easily stands up as one of the best of their career (which in turn follows their most commercially successful, 2007's Send away the Tigers) Manic Street Preachers not only wear their status lightly but temper it with the thrill, dynamism and electric charge of kids on the cusp of greatness. Yet, for all the excellence of Journal for Plague Lovers(a touching memorial to deceased original band member Richie Edwards, whose last batch of lyrics form the poetic spine of the record), it is the back catalogue that turns the audience from admirers to participants.

From Motorcycle Emptinessto Motown Junk via Autumn Song, Little Baby Nothing, Sorrow 16, Tsunamiand If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next(undoubtedly a song title for these chilling times), the band visited the past without paying lip-service to it. Would that other rock acts do the same with such energy, fortitude and class.

Manic Street Preachers perform at Oxegen, Punchestown, Co Kildare, on July 12