Manic Street Preachers have dropped the reflective new single ‘Brushstrokes Of Reunion’. Check it out below.
Shared today (January 31), the track marks the latest single from the group’s forthcoming album. Titled ‘Critical Thinking’, the record will be the band’s 15th studio LP and is available to pre-order here.
Originally, the record was set to be released today, although this was later pushed back to February 14 due to production delays.
Now, with ‘Brushstrokes Of Reunion’ the Manics have shared further insight into the album as a whole, and captured a nod to both their earlier days and a homage to two of their peers.
“I listened to the sound of your singing / Now the pain had reached / Its final limit,” frontman James Dean Bradfield sings atop uplifting, bright instrumentals. “The colour of distance had found its mission / It was not a reminder / It was a vision”.
Speaking about the inspiration for the single, the band said that ‘Brushstrokes Of Reunion’ has “nods to imperial-era Waterboys, particularly the love and desperation of ‘Rags’ – R.E.M. ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’ meets classic Manics crunch + velocity”.
They continued: “Lyrically, it’s about the hypnotic quality of a painting that’s inherited from someone who has passed.” Check it out above, alongside a Kieran Evans-directed video.
The single follows on from the recently shared euphoric track ‘People Ruin Paintings’, which saw the group explore the “destruction of truth”.
As for the record as a whole, ‘Critical Thinking’ has been described as “a record of opposites colliding – of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution”.
Speaking to NME in October, bassist and singer Nicky Wire shared what fans can expect from the release. “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 which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs,” he said.
“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 scepticism and suspicion, the drive to the internal seems inevitable – start with yourself, maybe the rest will follow.”
Manics are set to kick off a series of UK tour dates later this spring, including a slot at Live At Leeds. You can purchase any remaining tickets here.
Back in 2021, Manics spoke to NME again and reflected on their legacy. “When you’ve been together this long and know each other this much, it becomes much more about communication through instinct and discovering that natural way of making songs,” Wire said. “We have talked ourselves through oblivion, the three of us. I can’t describe it any other way.”
Watch that interview in full above.
