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Did you have as much fun making Send Away The Tigers as it sounds you did?

Yeah, that's 100% true. The theory behind the album was: have we done what we're best at, what we love doing? Ie. rock music with - hopefully - intelligent lyrics. It felt like we rediscovered the reasons why we wanted to be in a band in the first place. We wanted to make sure it was coherent; the last two albums haven't sounded like Manic Street Preachers. So it feels glorious to be back.

It's interesting that you're happy to say that - do you think the last couple of albums weren't up to strength?

I think so; I think Lifeblood was really confusing and didn't sound like us at all. We didn't work together very much on it at all. It's not like we had rows or anything, it's just we had a theory that we must sound like New Order or the Pet Shop Boys.

We worked separately, we were quite detached. Know Your Enemy has its moments of brilliance but there's no focus; it's too all over the place. I'm not saying they were sh*t albums but when we work best is when we're all in the same room and we know what we're doing.

You've reversed the Rs again, for the first time since the Holy Bible; is this saying that you're comfortable with who you are and were?

In one sense it's purely aesthetic. I think it looks brilliant, and it's so identifiable with us. We wanted to reclaim all the things that kind of made us. Musically it's not like The Holy Bible at all, but [it recalls] all our best memories, how we looked, how we felt, how we sounded.

We just wanted to give it one last shot really and see if we could pull it off because it's not easy on your eighth album. There's a new band every week so we wanted to give it one last crack.

When you say one last crack, does this mean that if the album doesn't meet your artistic or commercial expectations that you'll give it up?

I don't think it's either - if you're too artistic then you end up being self-indulgent and if you chase sales too much you usually don't get them! But there's an element of 'sh*t or bust' this time. If this one doesn't make us or our audience happy, then perhaps we should call it a day. Luckily, I think we might have pulled it off.

This album does sound like it could put you back in the affections of some might see as the core Manics fanbase...

Yeah, I was reading a lot about [The Who's] Pete Townsend around the time of Quadrophenia and he felt that he had become totally disconnected from his fans and his band. I think we felt like that - the people who kind of loved us had stopped loving us.

We'd stopped loving ourselves. We didn't feel happy ourselves and that then gets projected onto an audience and it's difficult to reconnect with them. We set out to reconnect with them.