Manic Street Preachers have shared the Nicky Wire-fronted single ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’, as well as announcing details of new album ‘Critical Thinking’ and a UK tour. Check it all out below, along with Wire telling us about the LP’s artwork.
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Following on from lead single ‘Decline & Fall‘, the follow-up to 2021’s acclaimed chart-topping 14th album ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ comes teased by ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’ – with bassist and lyricist Wire taking up lead vocals.
The band said that the song was initially inspired by a line from the poet Anne Sexton (“I am a collection of dismantled almosts“) and draws on a “fearful midlife nostalgia” set against typical Manics bittersweet arena euphoria – inspired by the “classic ’70s rock’n’roll” of The Only Ones and Cockney Rebel and alongside Dinosaur Jr’s ‘Freak Scene’.
Wire’s vocal adds his usual Echo & The Bunnymen-esque melancholy as he mourns “the man I used to be, in a decade I felt free” and takes centre-stage in the fittingly nostalgic video directed by longtime collaborator Kieran Evans – drawing on the band’s many literary influences and aesthetic touchstones.
Wire first took up lead vocals on a number of tracks from the band’s 2001 album ‘Know Your Enemy’, as well as having his voice on ‘Send Away The Tigers’ classic ‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough’, ‘William’s Last Words’ from ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’, ‘The Future Has Been Here 4 Ever’ from ‘Postcards From A Young Man’, ‘As Holy As The Soil’ from ‘Rewind The Film’, the title track of ‘Futurology’, and a host of the band’s B-sides and demos among others.
He has also released two solo albums with ‘I Killed The Zeitgeist’ back in 2006 and 2023’s surprise release ‘Intimism‘.
Due for release on January 31, 2025, ‘Critical Thinking’ has been described as “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, frontman] which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs,” Wire continued.
“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.”
Discussing the album artwork, Wire exclusively told NME: “I’ve always been a fan of David Hurn, he is a colossus of modern documentary photography.
“Last year I bought a couple of his beautiful prints and to cut a long story short he ended up coming to the Manics Door to the River studio in Caerleon and delivering the prints by hand. We sat and talked all morning, the stories were mesmerising, the coffee was strong and the time flew by. David was 89 when I met him, his enthusiasm and will to pursue his work/art really resonated with me and pushed us onwards. This eventually led to the cover of the new Manics record – the photo seemed to express the same eternal uncertainty, doubt and desire that run through the record itself.”
Wire added: “It’s a massive thrill to have one of his photos on a Manics record, it’s elegiac, widescreen longing mirrors where we are as a band as we release our 15th studio album.”
Frontman James Dean Bradfield previously explained how there was little concept behind this album, just that it featured ‘some of their best songs‘.
“We started with a bit more urgency than usual. Without knowing it, we had five or six demos already… maybe it was that subconscious threat of time running out after COVID,” he told MOJO.
“There was no MO. Sometimes we played live together in a definite band environment, other times it was more isolated, where I just laid a guitar down to a click [track], or Nick [Wire] put a vocal down with a click, or I’d do a really rough acoustic version, and we’d build from those. So it was about two years of intense, scatterbrained work.”
He added: “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. We wanted to sing, play, be free, and for what Nick was writing lyrically to have a place to shine.
“Nick’s trying to analyse his position in the world and reconcile his antagonism towards modern-day politics or beliefs – his song ‘Critical Thinking’ talks about empathy and the well-being industry, whilst we revel in other people’s destruction,” he added. “My three songs were optimistically looking for an answer in a more pragmatic way. I’ve got a song called ‘Being Baptised’, which is a postcard from the past about a fucking lovely day I spent with Allen Toussaint, basking in his wisdom and judgement and talent. So that’s the dichotomy they have.”
Before headlining the festival Bearded Theory alongside Iggy Pop in May, Manics will be heading out on a UK headline tour in April. Tickets will be on sale from 9.30am Friday November 1 and available here. Check out dates below.
APRIL
11 – Glasgow Barrowland
12 – Glasgow Barrowland
18 – London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
19 – London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
25 – Wolverhampton The Civic at the Halls
26 – Bristol Beacon
MAY
2 – Manchester O2 Apollo
3 – Manchester O2 Apollo
9 – Swansea Arena
10 – Swansea Arena
Wire currently has an art exhibition, My Little Empire, running at the Narbeth Museum in Pembrokeshire until December, featuring 26 pieces that showcase his love of the Polaroid image.
