Manic Street Preachers announce Critical Thinking album & 2025 UK tour dates

25 October 2024, 12:54 | Updated: 21 February 2025, 15:48

By Jenny Mensah

The Welsh rockers have shared Hiding In Plain Sight, their first single with Nicky Wire on lead vocals, and detailed their 12th studio album and tour.

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Manic Street Preachers have released the details of their fifteenth studio album and an accompanying UK tour.

The veteran rockers - made up of James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore - will release their Critical Thinking album on 31st January 2025 and embark on dates in the spring.

The band have also unveiled their new single Hiding In Plain Sight which sees bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire take on lead vocals for the first time ever.

Watch the official video for the single here:

Manic Street Preachers - Hiding in Plain Sight (Official Video)

Nicky Wire said of 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. 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.”

Speaking to MOJO magazine frontman James Dean Bradfield said: “Sometimes just to have your best songs is enough, just putting a record out and not trying to describe a big overarching concept, even though there is a thread there.”

Critical Thinking is available to pre-order in various formats at the Manic Street Preachers store.

Manic Street Preachers' Critical Thinking artwork. Picture: Press

Manic Street Preachers have announced a series of UK tour dates to follow the release of the album.

Tickets go on general sale on Friday 1st November at 9.30am and fans who pre-order the new album from the official store will have access to the pre-sale on Wednesday 30th October at 9.30am.