Manic Street Preachers have announced Critical Thinking, their 15th album, which will be out January 31 via Columbia Records. The album follows 2021’s Ultra Vivid Lament (which debuted at #1 in the UK) and was made at the band’s Door To The River Studio and legendary Rockfield Studios in Wales with regular collaborators Dave Eringa and Loz Williams as co-producers.
“This is a record of opposites colliding – of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution,” says bassist Nicky Wire. “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.”
The album includes recent single “Decline and Fall,” and they’ve just shared “Hiding in Plain Sight” which is the first Manics’ single in their history to be sung by Nicky Wire. (Guitarist James Dean Bradfield sings lead on all the others.) He definitely brings a different vibe to the band’s anthemic style and you can watch the video for that and “Decline and Fall” below.
Manic Street Preachers have also announced 2025 UK tour dates and those are listed below.
Manic Street Preachers – 2025 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