The Ultra Vivid Lament’ is the 14th studio album from Manic Street Preachers. It is both reflection and reaction; a record that gazes in isolation across a cluttered room, fogged by often painful memories, to focus on an open window framing a gleaming vista of land melting into sea and endless sky. Musically, ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ is inspired by a formative years record box (ABBA, post-Eno Roxy, the Bunnymen, Fables-era REM, Lodger) though the end result could only be the unique union of James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore, collectively one of the UK’s most consistently brilliant rock’n’roll bands for over three decades.

This compilation of 39 tracks, rather arrogantly titled The Album, offers a good mix of current guitar-based pop, rock and indie with the bonus of Fatboy Slim's housey "Star 69" and Roni Size's "Dirty Beats" tacked on the end. This is the sort of album you could expect to hear down the student union bar with a range of songs to cover all bases for even the most fussy of compilation critics. CD2 holds the indie-rock lighter in the air with Coldplay's "Trouble" and David Gray's "Late Night Radio" sandwiched between tracks by likely lads Supergrass ("Movin'") and Blur ("Coffee & TV"). Less obvious inclusions are alt.country masters Grandaddy ("The Crystal Lake") and gentle folkies the Kings of Convenience ("Toxic Girl"). CD1 is the less easy-listening of the two with some rock guitar riffing from the Manics ("You Stole The Sun…"), JJ72 ("Oxygen") and perfectly hip Placebo's "Taste In Men". If you're not into dance and the latest compilation from clubland isn't your cup of tea, then this could well be The Album before a good night out.

Manic Street Preachers have always been a band of very specific charms, something that has not translated outside of the U.K. particularly well. Although it boasts a generous 20 tracks, the 2002 compilation Forever Delayed isn't likely to change that situation, even if it has the lion's share of their big singles, since a band devoted to sloganeering doesn't play outside of their province, or era, without some knowledge of their context…

Always aware of the import of even their slightest movement, Manic Street Preachers place a lot of weight on their album titles and 2014's Futurology is designed as a conscious counterpoint to 2013's Rewind the Film. That record wound up closing an era where the Manics looked back toward their own history as a way of moving forward, but Futurology definitively opens a new chapter for the Welsh trio, one where they're pushing into uncharted territory. Never mind that, by most standards this charge toward the future is also predicated on the past, with the group finding fuel within the robotic rhythms of Krautrock and the arty fallout of punk; within the context of the Manics, this is a bracing, necessary shift in direction. All the death disco, free-range electronics, Low homages, and Teutonic grooves, suit the situational politics of the Manics, perhaps even better than the AOR-inspired anthems that have been their stock in trade, but the words – crafted, as ever, by Nicky Wire, who remains obsessed with self-recriminations, injustice and rallying cries – aren't the focus here. Unique among Manics albums, Futurology is primarily about the music, with the surging synthesizers and jagged arrangements providing not an emotional blood-letting or call to arms, but rather an internal journey.