Manic Street Preachers have opened up about the inspiration in their new album ‘Critical Thinking’, and said that they approached the writing process “with a bit more urgency than usual”.
It comes after the band returned with their triumphant single, ‘Decline & Fall’, back in August, and announced details of their upcoming 15th album.
They had been teasing new material in advance, and the track arrived on the eve of the 30th anniversary of 1994 album ‘The Holy Bible’. It was their first new music since 2021’s chart-topping 14th album ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’.
Now, the members have opened up about the new project in an interview, and revealed that the songs came together across two years.
“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,” James Dean Bradfield 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.”
The ‘Decline & Fall’ single adopted some retro-futuristic elements, as well as nods to influences like The War On Drugs. It was recorded at the band’s Door To The River studio in Newport and the legendary Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, and was produced by regular collaborators Dave Eringa and Loz Williams and mixed by Caesar Edmunds (Beach House, Suede, Wet Leg).
That song, like with the other tracks on the record, came as the band went into the writing sessions without a preconceived concept, 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. We wanted to sing, play, be free, and for what Nick was writing lyrically to have a place to shine,” he explained.
“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.”
Concluding, he said: “Perhaps we will have to use this sense of freedom to challenge ourselves on the next record. Looking for that other version of yourself sometimes involves somebody else. But with this album, this is definitely what we wanted.”
Before the interview with MOJO, the band discussed their upcoming album in an interview with Louder Sound, which they described at the time as “90 per cent done” and likely to come out in January or February 2025.
“It has a lot of energy, even though I don’t feel particularly energised,” said bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire. “One of the songs is like a mixture of The Cardigans and The Skids, who are two of our favourite bands, and another sounds like ‘Come Up And See Me’ [by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel] played by Dinosaur Jr.”
The Welsh icons and former NME Godlike Genius winners released their album ‘Know Your Enemy’ in 2022 and ‘Lifeblood’ earlier this year, while last year Nicky Wire surprise-released his second solo album ‘Intimism’.
As well as the upcoming material, Manics recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of their 1994 album ‘The Holy Bible’ with a one-off screening of the concert film BePure-BeVigilant-Behave.
Later this month, the band will appear on a new episode of Later… With Jools Holland, alongside Cymande, MØ, Jerron Paxton and Nia Smith.
