As the last didactic rock band on the planet the Manic Street Preachers must feel awfully alone at times. They might be old enough to have benefited from free university tuition but on their eighth album they remain drawn to the big issues.

For, incredible though it may seem to younger readers, the music press once played a part in educating youth. Writers showed off their knowledge, often at an undergraduate level. Political engagement, like pretension, was a given. And everyone was going to die in a nuclear holocaust anyway.

How times have changed. Bright young revolutionaries are now rock’s domesticated elder statesmen. Former public schoolboys are no longer safely confined to institutions where they can do little harm, such as banks or the Foreign Office, but infest the pop charts instead. Even a talented young wordsmith such as Alex Turner can offer little more than sharply detailed descriptions of the familiar.

Not the Manics – one of their biggest hits celebrated the historical significance of public libraries. Today kids mope outside them instead.

On the new album, the raucous Rendition takes its title from the expression “extraordinary rendition”, notoriously used to describe the unilateral transfer of detainees across borders by the US authorities.

I’m Just a Patsy, its title Lee Harvey Oswald’s famously unproven excuse, conflates conspiracy theories with romance. Imperial Bodybags marries the thundering rocka-billy of the Stray Cats’ Runaway Boys to a scathing critique of American attitudes, a pointlessly thrilling exercise. Even the title track, a mid-paced rocker that would have benefited from less tasteful guitar playing, alludes to Tonys Hancock and Blair.

It’s a didactic collection then, musically as much as politically. The implication is obvious: listen to this and you might learn something about proper music. It’s no surprise that the hidden track should be an ominous version of John Lennon’s cynical Working Class Hero.

The accompanying press notes by the bassist Nicky Wire are hilariously candid, allowing this reviewer to note every musical steal, then tick them off against Wire’s admissions. Certainly the excellent single Your Love Alone is not Enough, a duet with Nina Pers-son of the Cardigans, brings to mind the equally middle-aged Hole, as he suggests.

The singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield has been borrowing from Guns N’ Roses for so long now that it comes as a shock to hear such a blatant tribute to Sweet Child o’ Mine kick off the extremely effective power ballad Autumnsong.

Underdogs salutes the Sex Pistols, while I’m Just a Patsy and Winterlovers nod to Seventies classic rock.

Despite the usual whiff of self-improvement, Send Away the Tigers is downright playful by the standards of this famously serious band. At well under 40 minutes, just like the albums that inspired it, this certainly never drags. Clearly nostalgia can be fun, more fun than teenage years holed up in your room.

As they very nearly called a previous record, This is my Youth, Tell Me Yours.

(Columbia)

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010