Critical Thinking - 2025 European Columbia Label 25 track 2CD Set

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.

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, 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.”
 

Tracklisting.

CD1.
1. Critical Thinking
2. Decline & Fall
3. Brushstrokes of Reunion
4. Hiding In Plain Sight
5. People Ruin Paintings
6. Dear Stephen
7. Being Baptised
8. My Brave Friend
9. Out Of Time Revival
10. Deleted Scenes
11. Late Day Peaks
12. OneManMilitia

CD2.
1. Critical Thinking - Demo
2. Decline & Fall - Demo
3. Brushstrokes of Reunion - Demo
4. Hiding In Plain Sight - Demo
5. People Ruin Paintings - Demo
6. Dear Stephen - Demo
7. Being Baptised - Demo
8. My Brave Friend - Demo
9. Out Of Time Revival - Demo
10. Deleted Scenes - Demo
11. Late Day Peaks - Demo
12. OneManMilitia - Demo
13. Decline & Fall (Steven Wilson Remix)