Manic Street Preachers have released a new single today (Friday 10 January), the latest cut from their forthcoming 15th album Critical Thinking, due out at the end of this month. A stirring, jangly number titled People Ruin Paintings, it follows the release of previous singles Decline & Fall and Hiding In Plain Sight. The latter was the first Manics single to feature a lead vocal from bassist Nicky Wire.
Writing about the new single in promo materials to accompany Critical Thinking, the band explained the lyrical themes and sonic influences behind People Ruin Paintings:
“The narcissism of adventurers + explorers, the hypocrisy of the carbon footprint - the empty evangelism of the television travel show drenched in a cynical inverted nihilism. Man’s insatiable addiction to discover and use. The gentle lilt of 10,000 Maniacs. Musically the three of us playing telepathically, referencing thirty plus years of playing together instinctively.”
Critical Thinking is the Welsh trio’s first album since 2021’s The Ultra Vivid Lament, which became their first Number One album since 1998’s This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. They will embark on a sold-out UK tour later this year with a run of festival appearances following in the summer.
Upon the announcement of Critical Thinking, Wire said the following about the record:
“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.”
Watch the “official visualiser” for People Ruin Paintings below:
