Manic Street Preachers share bittersweet single ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’ and announce new album ‘Critical Thinking’

nme.com:

Manic Street Preachers have shared the Nicky Wire-fronted single ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’, and announced details of new album ‘Critical Thinking’ and a UK tour.

Check it all out below, along with Wire telling us about the LP’s artwork.Following on from lead single ‘Decline & Fall‘, the follow-up to 2021’s acclaimed chart-topping 14th album ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ comes teased by ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’ – with bassist and lyricist Wire taking up lead vocals.The band said that the song was initially inspired by a line from the poet Anne Sexton (“I am a collection of dismantled almosts“) and draws on a “fearful midlife nostalgia” set against typical Manics bittersweet arena euphoria – inspired by the “classic ’70s rock’n’roll” of The Only Ones and Cockney Rebel and alongside Dinosaur Jr’s ‘Freak Scene’.Wire’s vocal adds his usual Echo & The Bunnymen-esque melancholy as he mourns “the man I used to be, in a decade I felt free” and takes centre-stage in the fittingly nostalgic video directed by longtime collaborator Kieran Evans – drawing on the band’s many literary influences and aesthetic touchstones.

Wire first took up lead vocals on a number of tracks from the band’s 2001 album ‘Know Your Enemy’. He has also contributed vocals to ‘Send Away The Tigers’ classic ‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough’, ‘William’s Last Words’ from ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’, ‘The Future Has Been Here 4 Ever’ from ‘Postcards From A Young Man’, ‘As Holy As The Soil’ from ‘Rewind The Film’, the title track of ‘Futurology’, and a host of the band’s B-sides and demos among others.He has also released two solo albums with ‘I Killed The Zeitgeist’ back in 2006 and 2023’s surprise release ‘Intimism‘.Due for release on January 31, 2025, ‘Critical Thinking’.