Manic Street Preachers - Critical Thinking (2025)

Nearly 40 years in, the Manics are turning back the clock to the arty alt-pop of the 1980s—and also playing at reinvention. Bassist Nicky Wire takes lead vocals on several songs for the first time, and it doesn't at all feel like a concession to keep a band member happy. Wire's voice is more barbed and ominous-sounding than James Dean Bradfield's, and so are his lyrics. "The pinnacle of despair/ The apex of denial/ The skyscrapers of untruth/ Customized feeds/ Net neutrality/ Smart meters/ Smart order/ Smart fucking railways/ Body positivity/ Believe in yourself/ Imposter syndrome/ Fuck that!" Wire growls on the hard-charging title track, bemoaning how online culture pays lip service to wellness and self-care even as it fuels a desire to tear one another down.

On "One Man Militia"—dark, but made shiny with laser sounds and soaring synth—Wire weighs, as he has said, "the impossibility of reasoned debate in the cesspit of digital oblivion." Wire has described Critical Thinking as "a record of opposites colliding," in reference to both his and Bradfield's lyrical styles, but also how the brooding is counterbalanced by music with "effervescence and an elegiac uplift." To that end, the band reference some of their favorites from four decades ago.

Swirling "People Ruin Paintings" adopts, as Wire has said, "the gentle lilt of 10,000 Maniacs," while "Brushstrokes of Reunion"—a big, glistening rock song with guitars that lean psychedelic—nods to the Waterboys and Lifes Rich Pageant-era R.E.M. Inspired by the rhythm of "When Doves Cry," "Out of Time Revival," with its blazing guitar solo and crisp handclaps, feels lifted from a John Hughes movie soundtrack. "Deleted Scenes" disdains getting caught up in "therapy speak" and is the band's "version of the pure pop glitter of the alternative '80s—The Cure, Strawberry Switchblade … " And "Dear Stephen" is a jangling track for (Stephen) Morrissey of the Smiths, who sent a teenage Wire a postcard in 1984 and who has alienated some fans with his far-right views on immigration and nationalism. "Dear Stephen, please come back to us/ I believe in repentance and forgiveness/ It's so easy to hate/ it takes guts to be kind/ to paraphrase one of your heartbreak lines," Wire sings, borrowing from the great Smiths song "It's Over" in both words and Johnny Marr's guitar tone.

Bradfield has three songs here, including the jangle-pop "Being Baptised," about a day spent with the late Allen Toussaint. (Wire has noted that the motif that opens the song is a "nod" to "Southern Nights," which was written by Toussaint and made famous by Glen Campbell.) "Hiding in Plain Sight," meanwhile, was inspired by the work of poet Anne Sexton. Dressed with lovely, gauzy harmonies by Lana McDonagh, it warns about the middle-age trap of nostalgia: "The mirror is a trap that saves/ Or a debt that makes you pay." But the Manics, even as they fondly look backward, refuse to get stuck in a rut.

TRACKLIST

1 Critical Thinking
2 Decline & Fall
3 Brushstrokes of Reunion
4 Hiding in Plain Sight
5 People Ruin Paintings
6 Dear Stephen
7 Being Baptised
8 My Brave Friend
9 Out Of Time Revival
10 Deleted Scenes
11 Late Day Peaks
12 OneManMilitia