![Manic Street Preachers – ‘Critical Thinking’ album review Manic Street Preachers – ‘Critical Thinking’ album review](https://m5.paperblog.com/i/793/7938604/manic-street-preachers-critical-thinking-albu-L-2As0HL.jpeg)
Out on 31 January, ‘Critical Thinking’, Manic Street Preachers’ fifteenth (!) album, finds the legendary Welsh trio celebrating conflicting ideas colliding. Nicky Wire says: ‘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 title track opens the record and is unlike anything the Manics have recorded before. It’s essentially a Trainspotting-style soliloquy (‘Believe in yourself. Imposter syndrome. Fuck that’) being delivered against a stomping glam rock-meets-disco soundtrack. This is followed by lead single ‘Decline and Fall’, a classic slice of melodic rock with a singalong edge.
‘Brush Strokes of Reunion’ continues in the same vein with James’ vocals at the forefront – albeit with an added blast of super synths. ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ has huge riffs and the eye-opening, dark-edged lyrics we’ve come to expect – ‘the mirror is a trap that fails’ – while ‘People Ruin Paintings’ is a timely and apt piece with its lament of certain elements of modern society’s desire to ‘take the climber out of the mountain’ and ‘take the explorer out of the wilderness’.
‘Was I being drowned or baptised?’ is one of the key question on ‘Being Baptised’, while the band also tall about bringing sunshine into darkened rooms. They’ve always been apt at lurking and looking beyond the gray areas.
There’s a change of tone on ‘My Brave Friend’, a personal and poignant piece about losing a friend: ‘Like a Viking, burning in flames’. There’s a Bacharach-style earnest tone that hits hard when James recalls his last meeting and how it was full of silent jokes: ‘You said you were tired and taking time off’. The rawness in his voice when he bids farewell – ‘Sail away, my brave friend’ – is enough to bring a tear to the eye of even the blackest heart.
‘Out of Time Revival’ is drenched in synths to start, with the band offering nods to Joy Division and Depeche Mode, before the rock and roll sensibilities take over and they celebrate how ‘I started believing in an out of time revival’. There’s an urgency to the riffs in ‘Deleted Scenes’ while ‘Late Day Peaks’ reminded us of Tears for Fears with its talk of a ‘world so wrong’.
The closing ‘One Man Militia’ has Nicky Wire ranting about the modern world and how he’s starting to feel old and vulnerable. There are so many relatable terms for people who show compassion and are just looking for the best in others: ‘I don’t know what I’m for but I know what I’m against’. And it’s all delivered against a rollocking Cult-esque soundtrack.
‘Critical Thinking’ is a record that shows that Manic Street Preachers are still refreshingly vital, and although the world may change, it’s always worth fighting the good fight