ONE of the proudest moments I've had in music journalism was, upon doing a 'vanity search' on Google, I came across a fansite dedicated to the Manic Street Preachers that featured a stinking review by this author of one of their Olympia gigs a couple of years ago. There was a forum in which the review (and reviewer) were completely slagged off. You see, ever since their heyday during the late 1990s, the Welsh trio were insufferable idiots. Their aggressive politicising contradicted a seeming intelligence, their pious social commentary was often accompanied by a vicious bigotry. Bassist/lyricist Nicky Wire wishing Michael Stipe, like Freddie Mercury, would die of Aids was the one that did it. How could you connect with a band like that?

It was a huge surprise therefore to discover such lovely chaps in a Dublin hotel last week. "Still or sparkling?" Wire asks me politely.

"Have a ciggie if you want, mate."

It's all a bit disappointing. I was hoping for some splenetic rants, maybe an assault on the chamber maid or something. . .

What led me there, above curiosity, is that I actually loved some of their songs, thought Everything Must Go was one of 1996's better albums and, after hearing their latest release, Send Away The Tigers, realised this was a band finally growing up. Sure, it's still a classic Manics album, but they seem to have rediscovered that euphoric quality that they all but lost on the two albums that followed 1998's This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours.

"There's something life-affirming about it which is quite weird for us, " says Wire, who along with singer/guitarist James Dean Bradfield released a solo record last year. "We looked a lot at what we consider our best records, especially Everything Must Go.

That feeling of euphoria, hopefully some intelligence, and some real rock presence and that we would reconnect with those things again."

A former history student, Wire thought it appropriate to "be revisionist with our own history" and reconnect with the idealism of the band's best work. He explains that as you get older, "cynicism and nihilism replaces naivety".

That it's harder to have fun.

The Manics hit big at the height of the Britpop era. Nobody knew where to put them and they were often criticised for standing for nothing. Aggressive socialism and personal nihilism aren't exactly natural bedfellows.

"I think that was a blessing in disguise, " says Wire. "Ourselves and Radiohead both started at the same time ("I think they are still going, " he quips) and we both existed in our own bubble. There was all this Manchester stuff, grunge, Britpop, then new rave . . .

and we've never really been part of any of it. I think we've been quite lucky and perhaps a bit clever too."

The contradiction in their music . . . the bombastic sound, fly kicks and flying V guitars onstage allied to lyrics about the Spanish civil war or the welfare state . . . is something they now cherish.

Pint-sized Bradfield has been listening to the conversation and ruminating. "Sometimes there were high ideals, " he says, "then there was the folly of ambition and sometimes we were just a big dumb rock band as well. It's about balance. Whenever we played live at the start there was an old-fashioned entertainment aspect . . . you could watch us fall apart or you could watch us soar. Our last album we thought about the music and tried to deconstruct it but this time if it didn't work we dumped it. If you use a sporting analogy, Lifeblood was sometimes overcoached and this album is us playing with a smile on our faces."

What follows is a discourse on the merits of the Wales and Ireland rugby teams. "We can go from winning a Grand Slam to fuck all, " says Bradfield. "Ireland and Wales have dominated for the last three years, " adds Wire.

"England haven't beaten Ireland in seven games and they still approach the game as if they are favourites. It's crazy. If you had a good pair of props you could win the World Cup . . . the ones you have are good players but they are a bit flaky."

Bradfield and Wire get on like you would expect childhood friends to get on. A tight-knit outfit, the singer's cousin Sean is the band's drummer. The only missing link is Richey James Edwards, Wire's university buddy and former frontman of the band who disappeared in February 1995.

"We can romanticise the particular friendship side of things, " says Bradfield, "but we had one particularly seismic event along the way and one of us is not in the band anymore and obviously not an active friend. There was something for us to overcome."

Although still officially a missing person, the band have gradually come to terms with Edwards' likely death. A self-harmer who admitted to bouts of chronic depression and eating disorders, Edwards' position on stage is still left vacant when the Manics play live. It's one of the ways they honour him.

Another is through song. The band's current single, 'Your Love Alone Is Not Enough', was written as a two-way conversation between Wire and Edwards, who used to thrash out lyrics together.

"I was thinking about what can make a man or a country happy, " he says. "Many people might think love is enough but Richey would have said it is not. It was a healthy discourse but love alone is not enough in itself to keep some people going. The discourse with him is always, always hovering about in my stratosphere. He will never be there. The closest we got [to feeling his presence] was doing the video for the song with Nina Persson [of the Cardigans] the other day. She looked so visually stunning we thought maybe we could get her in all the time."

Another new song, 'I'm Just A Patsy', apart from the Lee Harvey Oswald quote in the title, is also Wire's way of saying sorry for some of his previous bloopers.

Including the Stipe quote?

"I've been the biggest f***ing idiot for some of the things I've said. I find it really difficult not to have regrets. I also regret Richey is not around to see us become huge. He was such a cool person.

God knows what he would have come up with."

>> 'Send Away The Tigers' is out on 4 May on SonyBMG
>> The Manic Street Preachers play the Electric Picnic