Manic Street Preachers have shared new single ‘Orwellian’ ahead of the release of their 14th (!) studio album ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ on 3 September. A fitting soundtrack to our turbulent times, the band says: ‘The track is about the battle to claim meaning, the erasing of context within debate, the overriding sense of factional conflict driven by digital platforms leading to a perpetual state of culture war.’
Written on piano by James Dean Bradfield and influenced by ’70s and ’80s pop bands including ABBA, Fleetwood Mac and more New Wave-leaning artists including Talk Talk, the suitably melodic (and melancholic) track finds the band considering how ‘it seems impossible to choose a side’ and how we all have to find a way to co-exist with such division flared up by those in power – in the UK and the US (until very recently): ‘Everywhere you look, every way you turn, the future fights the past, the books begin to burn. Words wage war, meaning’s being missed, I’ll walk you through the apocalypse’