Manic Street Preachers explore “destruction of truth” on new single ‘People Ruin Paintings’

nme.com:

Manic Street Preachers have shared their euphoric new single ‘People Ruin Paintings’.The track, which follows previous singles ‘Decline & Fall‘ and the Nicky Wire-fronted ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’ is taken from their forthcoming new album ‘Critical Thinking’.Much like the former, the new single is a rousing widescreen anthem which sees frontman James Dean Bradfield explore the “destruction of truth” as he sings: “People ruin paintings, faces for the view / People destroy the truth.” You can listen to it below.Due for release on January 31, ‘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 recently told NME.“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.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.