Manic Street Preachers have shared their new single ‘People Ruin Paintings’.
The Welsh rockers’ latest track from their upcoming 15th studio album ‘Critical Thinking’ is about the “hypocrisy” of people’s “insatiable addiction” to travelling and exploring the world amid a climate crisis.
Explaining the lyrical theme, the band said: “The narcissism of adventurers and 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.”
The latest taste of the follow-up to 2021’s No.1 LP ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ follows ‘Decline And Fall’ and ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’, which sees bassist Nicky Wire perform lead vocals.
Nicky – who is joined by frontman James Dean Bradfield and drummer Sean Moore in the group – previously described the collection as a “record of opposites colliding” with “crises at the heart of these songs”.
He told NME : “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.”
‘Critical Thinking’ is released on January 31, and the Manics will embark on a UK tour in April, kicking off with two nights at Glasgow’s Barrowland on April 11 and 12.