LP, Limited Edition
Sony (2025) EU
LP contains 180gm heavyweight black vinyl, packaged in a matt finished sleeve. Each 12” record is housed in a printed inner bag with additional artwork, and credits.
Critical Thinking celebrates conflicting ideas colliding, with unflinchingly soul-searching lyrics meeting some of the most head-on, addictive melodies the band have ever recorded.
Manic Street Preachers’ Nicky Wire on Critical Thinking: “This is 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) which look for and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs.
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.”
Speaking to Mojo Magazine, James Dean 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.” The record is available on LP, CD, hardbook CD and cassette.