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Manic Street Preachers: Critical Thinking review – older and wiser
The Welsh rockers’ 15th album finds them in thought-provoking mood
Having rather lost their way for a decade, the Manics rediscovered their fire on Send Away the Tigers(2007) and then 2009’s magnificent Journal for Plague Lovers, and the albums since – while never quite reaching those heights – have been consistently impressive, offering minor variations rather than full-scale revolution. In that respect, Critical Thinking, their 15th album, doesn’t represent any great departure, even if the abrasive opening title track is something of a curveball, Nicky Wire coming across as a Ballardian Baz Luhrmann as he skewers the ideas of mindfulness and wellness over a Gang of Four-influenced backdrop. Dear Stephen jangles in a very 1980s way and is a bittersweet yearning for that era’s incarnation of (Steven) Morrissey (“I’m still a prisoner to you and Larkin/ Even as your history darkens”), as opposed to his more troubling recent persona.
Or read this on The Guardian