When the Manic Street Preachers met Fidel Castro in Havana, they told the Cuban leader how they hoped their performance hadn't been too loud for him. 'As loud as war?' Castro is said to have replied.

And that shows one pitfall a legion of Manics fans shared with their Britpop brethren who believed with evangelical zeal that their heroes' material offered more force than anything previously created in rock.

What does, however, set James Dean Bradfield and the Manics apart is a painful yet glorious history in which they lost a friend and band lynchpin in mysterious circumstances. The scars remain and can be heard here on Bradfield's first solo album.

On the surface, the singer-guitarist celebrates that sense of homecoming on leaving London's lounge lizards and boarding the train to South Wales - a line historically known as The Great Western. But on Bad Boys and Painkillers - a tribute to Richey James Edwards who disappeared in 1995 and in which it's hoped he's 'out of harm's way' - the personal eclipses the sense of place.

Manics' bassist Nicky Wire wrote the lyrics for Bad Boys and Bradfield does them justice. But the standout track is Bradfield's own To See a Friend in Tears - a balladic indictment of Britain being led to war - with his vocals over the willowy echo of an acoustic all too rarely used on this album. Which Way to Kyffin works well in empathising with Welsh landscape artist Kyffin Williams and that strong sense of Cambrian place Bradfield reaches for.

Many will yearn to hear how a frontman of Bradfield's calibre can master a solo effort. Yet on grimacing to the layers of 1980s-style synths on the opening tracks, they may well feel no better than Castro does now.