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Jan 29, 2025 Web Exclusive By Dom Gourlay

While some bands have made a career resting on their laurels, Manic Street Preachers have prolonged theirs by continuing to push the envelope. Having emerged in 1990 with a glut of three-minute punk anthems amidst a wave of indie rock and dance music crossover bands like proverbial sore thumbs, the Manics’ reluctance to conform or align themselves to any particular scene or genre has worked in their favor. Having built an intensely loyal and devoted band of followers over the years, it’s to their credit that a new Manic Street Preachers record is greeted with the same levels of excitement and adulation as it would have been three decades ago.

Album number 15 in the Manics’ impressive canon, Critical Thinking moves them even further away from the caustic glam-punk sonics of their roots but then working back through the band’s immeasurable back catalogue, would one honestly expect anything less?

Composed of 12 pieces, Critical Thinking is a thought-provoking record that takes an analytical look at one’s self as well as the social and political climate around it. There’s elements of self-reflection, particularly in two of the three songs bass player Nicky Wire sings lead vocals. Former single “Hiding in Plain Sight” (“Will you please take me back / to the beach where I once ran?”) takes its musical cue from Echo & The Bunnymen and Dinosaur Jr. respectively, while closing number “One Man Militia” (“I don’t know what I am for / but I know what I am against / I’m sickened to death with men / I’m bored to death with myself”) arguably represents the most sonically obtuse three minutes and 15 seconds on the album.

Elsewhere, the ode to a certain former singer of The Smiths (“Dear Stephen”) falls somewhere between the pristine pop of ABC and Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” (the piano riff), while “Out of Time Revival” also feels like it could have been made in the 1980s, albeit one inhabited by a widescreen production Bruce Springsteen or The Police would have been proud to call their own.

What Critical Thinking doesn’t do at any point is repeat itself, so there’s the elegant Go Betweens-esque “People Ruin Paintings” standing proudly alongside the more winsome likes of “Being Baptised” and “My Brave Friend,” the latter typifying Critical Thinking’s reflective nature in lyrics such as, “We used to live in the deepness of our souls, in our hearts / in our minds, and in our homes,” James Dean Bradfield’s honey dripping vocal sounding as poised as ever.

The third and final song to feature Nicky Wire on lead vocals is the opening number and title track itself, which finds him delivering lines like, “It’s okay not to be okay / live your best life, be kind, be empathetic,” over an arrangement that sits somewhere between C86 legends McCarthy and Spirit of Eden-era Talk Talk, yet all the while this is idyllic Manic Street Preachers. It couldn’t be anyone else making this record in 2025. (www.manicstreetpreachers.com)

Author rating: 8/10