ShareManic Street Preachers have released details of their fifteenth studio album and UK tour to accompany it. Critical Thinking was released on Columbia on 31st January 2025, and a new single featuring for the first time, lead vocals from bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire, Hiding In Plain Sight, is now available.
Initially inspired by a line from the poet Anne Sexton (“I am a collection of dismantled almosts”), Hiding In Plain Sight contrasts a fearful midlife nostalgia – one in which the writer longs to “keep the curtains drawn all day” – with a gloriously uplifting melody that draws on classic ’70s rock ‘n’ roll of The Only Ones, Cockney Rebel and the loose flow of Dinosaur Jr’s ‘Freak Scene’. Recorded at the band’s Door To The River Studio and Rockfield, Monmouth, the song features a lead vocal by Nicky Wire and added vocals by Lana McDonagh. It was produced by the band with regular collaborators Dave Eringa and Loz Williams and mixed by Caesar Edmunds (St Vincent/Wet Leg).
Critical Thinking celebrates conflicting ideas colliding, with unflinchingly soul-searching lyrics meeting some of the most head-on, addictive melodies the band has 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.
Manic Street Preachers have announced a series of UK tour dates to follow the release of the album. All of the dates take place on Friday and Saturday nights.
TOUR DATES 2025
April
| Date | Venue |
|---|---|
| Fri 11th | Barrowland Glasgow |
| Sat 12th | Barrowland Glasgow |
| Fri 18th | O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire London |
| Sat 19th | O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire London |
| Fri 25th | The Civic Halls Wolverhampton |
| Sat 26th | Beacon Bristol |
May
| Date | Venue |
|---|---|
| Fri 2nd | O2 Apollo Manchester |
| Sat 3rd | O2 Apollo Manchester |
| Fri 9th | Swansea Arena |
| Sat 10th | Swansea Arena |
Tickets are now on sale
