‘CRITICAL THINKING’ OUT 21st JANUARY 2025

Manic Street Preachers have today (25th Octobver 2024) released details of their fifteenth studio album to date and have further leaked deatils of a UK tour to accompany it. ‘Critical Thinking’ is to be released on Columbia Records on 31st January 2025, and the brand new single featuring lead vocals from bassist/lyricist Nicky Wire ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’ is OUT TODAY!

Tomorrow night (Saturday) on ‘Later With Jools Holland’ the band will perform the new single alongside their recent massive hit ‘Decline & Fall’, which was the first track released from the forthcoming album. Initially inspired by a line from by 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).

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 also today announced a series of UK tour dates to follow the release of the album. All dates take place on a Friday and Saturday night and fans who pre-order the new album from the official store will have access to the pre-sale on Wednesday 30th October.

April 2025

Fri 11th Glasgow Barrowland

Sat 12th Glasgow Barrowland

Fri 18th London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Sat 19th London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Fri 25th Wolverhampton The Civic at the Halls

Sat 26th Bristol Beacon

May 2025

Fri 2nd Manchester O2 Apollo

Sat 3rd Manchester O2 Apollo

Fri 9th Swansea Arena Sat

10th Swansea Arena