Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The world is full of sound bites and opinions, and they are often delivered with the kind of sickly tone that borders on nauseating and covets the attention of condescending; it is almost as we have lost the crucial ability to not only think true, but to express it in a way that is unique, the often repeated mantras somehow finding a way to remain in the public vocabulary as if insisted upon by some second rate George Orwell.

Indeed, even the science of critical thinking has taken a bow towards the illogical, the way we decipher, and process information is not so much now a skill but a way some have found to use to an advantage to beat the fair minded into accepting beliefs under the guise of being labelled, or cancelled, for just having doubts about common sense.

For more than 30 years, the Manic Street Preachers have toiled at the soul, they have undertaken a deeply personal mission to dig down in the depths, they have scaled the enlightened heights of examination, and placed enormous pressure upon themselves to fiercely answer the question of what is a fundamental reason for survival; and a band that perhaps that has undergone tragedy in their name, the very fact they have had the strength to achieve this constantly is without doubt a testament to their ability as songwriters and thinkers to which nothing is off the table.

Noted for their political and personal way of seeing music, Critical Thinking joins the pantheon of released albums with more than a sense of a bang, but with a determined honesty, a gravitas of sobriety rather than a reflection of the big explosive statement; and it has every right to feel the confidence of this dynamic as each song from the album sweeps generalisation from off its comfortable feet and places before the listener once again cold hard facts.

Across the album’s tracks, including richness of a defying nature in songs such as Brushstrokes Of Reunion, People Ruin Paintings, Dear Stephen, Deleted Scenes, Late Day Peaks, and the finale of OneManMilitia, James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, and Sean Moore combine in dedicated fashion to show that even as they close in on four decades of performance, the search for a truth has never been more vital, that the world needs more beauty, more industry of spirit than listening to the ramblings of insane old men in suits who seek to destroy rather than preserve and even make better.

The soundbites of an age are only uttered by those with limited imagination; you have to feel the anger of woke mind to understand just how stunted some generations, some mindsets are.

Ian D. Hall