One of my most consistent mottos in life is, Panic: It gets shit done. Brash, but true. I never thought I would see it demonstrated as perfectly as it was at Boy Cried Wolf’s gig at Camden Barfly last night.

   When the impeccably dressed Wayne Murray took centre stage, ready to launch into the head-bending opener, Ghost In A Photograph, I saw a pale and wide-eyed expression more suited to a man about to enter a cage fight with Vinnie Jones. But the great thing about panic in my experience is that it can bring out the best in people; something tenacious and raw.

   The set list strayed away from a few strong selections from their EP, The Firebrand. The desolate assault of melancholic guitar that is Forever Is A Dirty Word sat comfortably alongside the optimistic Summer Song, a new addition that was almost unnamed, and for a while was known only as Gary…

   They are also adept at providing the most unlikely of anthems. In the same way that I would be bemused by a chant involving tweed, or Emile Heskey, I find it charming that I have never left a Boy Cried Wolf gig without the chorus of ‘We are all…tricycle drivers!’ stuck in my head.

   By the time Tricycle Drivers was played the spaces between songs were punctuated by a level of applause (and a hint of Take That-esque screaming) that I hadn’t heard in The Barfly for a while. It was received with an endearing amount of surprise, with Wayne remarking, “You’re so loud. …It’s so nice!” with a bashful glance at the floor.

   The lyrics to No Comfort From Your Skin, the night’s closer, were penned by Wayne’s touring companion Nicky Wire, of Manic Street Preachers. It’s hardly surprising that the song drags you into a kind of (undeniably catchy) lament; “She’s picking me apart with the weight of her words/And killing my desire.” Heartbreak isn’t only Wire’s domain, however, as the rest of the set list is full of it. Traces Of You is a break-up song waiting to happen, one to put on repeat while working your way through the remains of a bottle of whiskey and going through all the ways in which their new girlfriend may be prettier…or something like that.

   “You’re exciting, we’re exciting, it’s exciting,” Wayne observed, and he was right. It had been a while since I had witnessed The Barfly so animated. I would see Boy Cried Wolf now, as soon as you can. Not only because they are awesome, and genuinely hard to compare to any other bands around right now, but because I doubt you’ll be able to see them in a venue this size for much longer.

    Do it. You won’t be disappointed.

So it transpires that football isn’t the only thing that the Portuguese are superior at. Music festivals can also be added to the (somewhat extensive) list.

   Optimus Alive festival is a three-day heavy rock affair in Alges, up-town Lisbon. The line-up was a failsafe combination of Florence & The Machine, Kasabian, Manic Street Preachers, Pearl Jam, Deftones, Faith No More, Jet and LCD Soundsystem. The temperature wasn’t predicted to drop below thirty degrees. There was going to be free Iced Tea. I was sold.

   So frequently in the UK festivals are much more enjoyable in advance than in the grim mud-soaked, piss-stained, beer-saturated reality. Festivals such as Glastonbury and T in the Park, costing around £200 per ticket, have gone from being lairy gatherings of over-excited music lovers to magnets for every wannabe indie kid and irritant poser under the age of 20. Those who would be content with taking amphetamines with WKD in a field for five days without seeing a single band are in the vast majority. No matter how good the line-up, I find it hard to concentrate on the immense experience of the music past the near-uncontrollable urge to line the rest of the crowd up against a wall and shoot them with air guns.

   Enter the foreign festival. Enter Optimus Alive.

   Firstly, it’s unbelievably clean. Even on the third day, pre-Pearl Jam, on a Saturday, when the queues for the portaloos (which were really more like clever portable communal bathrooms) demanded a fifteen-minute wait, they were nothing less than spotless and full of clean toilet paper. Seeing Pearl Jam without having to attempt the notorious “hover” manoeuvre to avoid syphilis, was mind-blowing.

   Secondly, the people were awesome. I mean genuinely awesome. The people who you would seek out at parties. That no one was visibly paralytic and/or throwing glasses of their own urine over parts of the crowd was instantly a step up from previous British experiences. But everyone I met while there had brilliant stories of musical escapades to tell; Madrid to see Bon Jovi, Rome to see U2, a row of Deftones fans racing Manics fans to the main stage barrier. Great scenes.

   The atmosphere is electric but never tips over into aggressiveness. Seeing siblings looking after their eleven-year-old brother near the back of the main stage whilst sipping pints of beer during Pearl Jam was particularly touching. At the front it was lairy but self-contained; even the mosh-pits were exhilarating rather than a desperate struggle to keep your femurs intact.

   It’s romantic, maybe naïve, to want British festivals to retain this sense of fun, this sense of wonder, without the cheap posturing and exhibitionism. But at least there’s always the chance to go overseas, which, when the combined cost of both the flight and weekend ticket comes to less than a Glastonbury or Reading/Leeds ticket alone, is a lot more affordable than you’d think.

   Lisbon, Germany, Spain, even Belgium. They all beat the British festivals in this Champions League.

“Apparently Ed O’Brien called me a wanker!” Nicky Wire explodes before the Manics’ glorious decade-spanning set draws to a close. “Fuck off back to boarding school you c***!” Almost twenty years into his career and he hasn’t lost his taste for an ill-advised fight, or an ill-advised amount of makeup. Less smokey-eyed and more deranged racoon, but still as full of anarchistic enthusiasm as he was at the beginning.

It feels like the beginning, in this venue that is the size of a glorified living room. It even starts at the beginning with the opening chords of rarely played Strip It Down from the band’s very first EP. One suspects that some of the venue mistook it for a new song. The next few were more recognisable though, Motorcycle Emptiness, Kevin Carter, Tsunami, From Despair To Where, interspersed with gems such as 2001’s gritty rock anthem Found That Soul, and lest we forget the first number one of this Millennium, Masses Against The Classes. James Dean Bradfield’s voice, that can fill 70,000 capacity stadiums, seems almost too big for the space. It’s a wonder there was any makeup left on the faces of the front row, so visceral was the attack of sound.

The only respite is provided by James’ brief acoustic interlude. A heart-rending rendition of another B-Side, Donkeys, and the familiar singalong that is The Everlasting gives just enough time for the front row to ease their bruised ribs, and for Nicky to change into something more comfortable. “Welsh tartan!” he exclaims on his return to the stage sporting a pink leopard-print mini skirt that an Essex hen night would be proud of. I jest. “You’ve still got the legs, Wire,” was James’ remark and I can only agree. 41 years old and he can still give female fans an inferiority complex. However as James begins to snarl into the mic again, You Love Us has never seemed more apt.   

The Manics, despite Nicky’s occasional pontificating about his politics degree (something that ironically can be attributed to absent member Richey Edwards, who Nicky has cited as being responsible for most of his essays…) and the band’s own fierce self-deprecation that has seen them throw commercial success back in the UK public’s face many times, have always been nothing if not 4real. While other bands merely hinted at, or sang about, revolution, the Manics endeavoured to create one. In a way, maybe they have. As well as an output of nine studio albums, one B-Sides collection, one Greatest Hits, and a scattering of EPs, the Manics can also count themselves responsible for the bookshelves and DVD collections of fans up and down the country and across the seas. JG Ballard, Sylvia Plath, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jack Lemmon sit alongside Public Enemy, Shirley Maclaine and the ever-present kohl-eyed spirit of Richey Edwards.

Never has a gig gone by without a tribute to their lost friend and tonight was no exception. No encore after A Design For Life, but of course they will be back. Back to the beginning and, hopefully, nowhere near the end.