Manic Street Preachers have released details of their fifteenth studio album and UK tour to accompany it. ‘Critical Thinking’ is released on Columbia on 31st January 2025, and a new single featuring lead vocals from bassist/lyricist Nicky Wire for the first time.
‘Hiding In Plain Sight’ is available now (25th October). The band will perform this alongside massive radio hit ‘Decline & Fall’, the first track released from the forthcoming album, tomorrow evening on Later with Jools Holland.
Initially inspired by a line from the poet Anne Sexton (“I am a collection of dismantled almosts“), ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ contrasts a fearful midlife nostalgia – one in which the writer longs to “keep the curtains drawn all day” – with a gloriously uplifting melody that draws on classic ’70s rock’n’roll of The Only Ones, Cockney Rebel and the loose flow of Dinosaur Jr’s ‘Freak Scene’. Recorded at the band’s Door To The River Studio and Rockfield, Monmouth, the song features a lead vocal by Nicky Wire and added vocals by Lana McDonagh. It was produced by the band with regular collaborators Dave Eringa and Loz Williams and mixed by Caesar Edmunds (St Vincent/Wet Leg).
‘Critical Thinking’ celebrates conflicting ideas colliding, with unflinchingly soul-searching lyrics meeting some of the most head-on, addictive melodies the band have ever recorded.
Manic Street Preachers’ Nicky Wire on Critical Thinking: “This is a record of opposites colliding – of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution. While the music has an effervescence and an elegiac uplift, most of the words deal with the cold analysis of the self, the exception being the three lyrics by James (Dean Bradfield) which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs.
The music is energised and at times euphoric. Recording could sometimes be sporadic and isolated, at other times we played live in a band setting, again the opposites making sense with each other. There are crises at the heart of these songs. They are microcosms of skepticism and suspicion, the drive to the internal seems inevitable – start with yourself, maybe the rest will follow.”
Speaking to Mojo Magazine, James Dean Bradfield said “Sometimes just to have your best songs is enough, just putting a record out and not trying to describe a big overarching concept, even though there is a thread there.”
The record is available on LP, CD, hardbook CD and cassette with two brand new songs available on a limited 7”, a remix of ‘Decline & Fall’ by Steven Wilson and demo versions of all the new album tracks on an extended CD. See the bands official store to see all the versions available.
https://ManicStreetPreachers.lnk.to/store
Manic Street Preachers have announced a series of UK tour dates (below) to follow the release of the album. All of the dates take place on Friday and Saturday nights, fans who pre-order the new album from the official store will have access to the pre-sale on Wednesday 30th October.
Manic Street Preachers – Critical Thinking // Columbia – 31/01/25
UK Tour Dates
April 11th – Glasgow Barrowland
April 12th – Glasgow Barrowland
April 18th – London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
April 19th – London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
April 25th – Wolverhampton The Civic at the Halls
April 26th – Bristol Beacon
May 2nd – Manchester O2 Apollo
May 3rd – Manchester O2 Apollo
May 9th – Swansea Arena
May 10th – Swansea Arena
Tickets will be available at 9.30 am Friday 1st November: https://ManicStreetPreachers.lnk.to/tickets
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