JJ72 - Barfly,London. Manic Street Preachers - V2002, Chelmsford. Saint Etienne - ICA, London

Whenever a young band, after their initial burst of activity and attention, disappears off the radar for 18 months, it's natural to become a little suspicious. You wonder if, rather than working diligently on their next magnum opus, they've actually been doing little more than growing their hair.

When I catch my first glimpse of JJ72's Mark Greaney tonight, I have my doubts. His bog-brush spikes have grown out into a long, boyish blond fringe, giving him the appearance of Brad Pitt in, er, Meet Joe Black. Meanwhile, gazelle-necked, implausibly beautiful bassist Hilary Woods increasingly resembles the young Ornella Muti, and although I can't see drummer Fergal Matthews from my vantage point, I'm sure that, at the very least, he's doing a decent Robert Mitchum. There are unconfirmed reports of a new, fourth member called Toby MacFarlaine, but, if he exists, he's obscured by a large pillar.

Last time we saw JJ72, they were superstars in waiting, seemingly poised to "do a Muse" and ascend to arena status. After retreating to Dublin to record the proverbial Difficult Second Album, where they'll go from here is anyone's guess. Tonight's show, a secret affair intended to showcase the album, I To The Sky, is mainly aimed at impressing the suits from the record company (or, I should say, the Carhartts – contrary to cliché, no one actually wears suits any more, just as no advertising exec has worn a ponytail since 1992). The relatively tiny Barfly is packed with industry movers and shakers. The problem with movers and shakers, of course, is that, ironically, they don't actually do any moving or shaking. Luckily, a smattering of actual fans down the front create some sort of atmosphere, and "October Swimmer" – still their finest song – gets a genuine scream.

Introducing "Formulae" ("the comeback single", he says, doing that annoying inverted commas thing with his fingers), Greaney looks slightly nervy, but above the music biz chitter-chatter, the I To The Sky material sounds just fine. There's a new lightness and open-ness to their sound, reflected even in Greaney's choice of attire (a crisp white shirt instead of 2000's head-to-toe black), although the serrated guitars and scorching vocals remain intact. There's something insulting to the intelligence about the traditional critical shorthand which says "raw-throated voice equals passion", but there's undeniably a certain quality to Greaney's vocal style which adds a conviction and believability to his words. One minute he sings in a slightly girly bleat, the next, without warning, he breaks into a gale-force scream. If he carries on at this rate, he's gonna do to his larynx what Roy Keane did to Alf Inge Haaland's kneecap, but that's between him and his throat specialist.

Last time Manic Street Preachers played the V festival, headlining the main stage, they were arguably the biggest rock band in Britain, and they previewed a forthcoming single, "Masses Against the Classes", which was set to become the first new No 1 of the 21st century. Two years is a long time in rock'n'roll, and after the disappointing sales of last year's Know Your Enemy album, they return on the smaller NME stage (although apparently, it's by choice).

The V festivals have always been middle-of-the-road, middlebrow and middle class (walking to the NME stage entails braving the strains of Alanis Morissette), and the Manics don't do anything to scare the horses.

Habitual agent provocateur Wire is quiet tonight – no remarks about "building a flyover through this shithole", no wishing death upon his fellow musicians, or mocking Royals for not knowing how to die properly – and when he selects a new bass guitar, it isn't because he's trashed the previous one, but because the strap had come loose. Instead, it's up to a newly-buff James Dean Bradfield – looking like himself circa 1994 (but with better hair) – to take the role of cheerleader, whipping up a chorus of "aaahs" before "Masses", and informing us, to some surprise, that "A Design For Life" is "a song about fucking".

There's no new material tonight – that will wait until November – so it's purely a hits set, offering a taster of the forthcoming Forever Delayed collection. Releasing a greatest hits CD may suggest a full stop, or at least a winding-down of a band's career, but word persistently reaches my ears that the Manics have recorded enough songs for a new album. The end may be nigh, but I'd love to believe that the most vital band of the last decade have it in them to do it one more time.

To the inattentive eye, it might seem that Saint Etienne have also vanished off the radar, and that the imminent Finisterre, a sixth "proper" album in 11 years, doesn't show much of a work rate. There is, however, a whole secret history of fan club-only releases, soundtracks for American indie movies and rarities compilations, which probably makes Bob Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell the hardest-working band in showbiz.

"Finisterre" is a word which resonates from childhood, one of those names you would only hear on the Shipping Forecast as you were twiddling the dial in search of voices from Radio Luxembourg, communist propaganda about grain harvests and US imperialism from Mockba. It means, literally, "land's end", or if you prefer, "the end of the earth".

In Saint Etienne's case, it might, specifically, mean the end of Britain. Anyone turning up to the ICA in search of the uncomplicated pop kicks of "He's On The Phone" or "You're In A Bad Way" will have been surprised at how small-"p" political the band has become. Stanley and Wiggs have developed a keen eye for the rapacity and heartlessness of Blair's Britain. You hear it first on "Heart Failed In A Back Of A Taxi", which targets football club asset strippers: "Sold the ground to the PLC/ Move the club out to Newbury/ Sod the fans and their family..." After a couple of hits to sugar the pill – "Sylvie" and the ever-sublime, epoch-defining "Nothing Can Stop Us", on which Cracknell whispers lovestruck pillowtalk over that old Dusty backbeat – the micro-politics are back. A run-through of the Finisterre album is accompanied by a specially made film which lingers on the bleakest images of London, the city with which Saint Etienne are so famously in love. We see spotty, blank-eyed youths on BMXs, bored security guards, but mostly, no humans at all, just derelict properties and signposts speaking the language of prohibition: "NO BALL GAMES", "ANTI CLIMB PAINT" and, ironically, "OPEN TO THE PUBLIC" on a food shack which is firmly shuttered and bolted.

Meanwhile, a new song, "Amateur", turns to suburbia ("now a piece of Farnborough is looking like Tirana") and specifically carcinogenic mobile phone aerials: "Pretty fast, he put a mast on the neighbouring flats/ A little girl called Jill/ Will become very ill/ But that is years away/ So who gives a hey..." Saint Etienne's greatest value has been in consistently proving that the banal equation, Pop equals Stupid, Rock equals Clever, is for morons who can only think in well-worn tramlines, and Finisterre is Stanley, Wiggs and Cracknell at their most POP. The challenge Saint Etienne throw down remains the same as ever: do you believe in magic?

s.price@independent.co.uk