Having rather lost their way for a decade, the Manics rediscovered their fire on Send Away the Tigers (2007) and then 2009’s magnificent Journal for Plague Lovers, and the albums since – while never quite reaching those heights – have been consistently impressive, offering minor variations rather than full-scale revolution. In that respect, Critical Thinking, their 15th album, doesn’t represent any great departure, even if the abrasive opening title track is something of a curveball, Nicky Wire coming across as a Ballardian Baz Luhrmann as he skewers the ideas of mindfulness and wellness over a Gang of Four-influenced backdrop.
From then on, we’re on more familiar territory, Decline and Fall and Brushstrokes of Reunion deploying the same galloping Abba piano flourishes that lit up 2021’s Ultra Vivid Lament. Dear Stephen jangles in a very 1980s way and is a bittersweet yearning for that era’s incarnation of (Steven) Morrissey (“I’m still a prisoner to you and Larkin/ Even as your history darkens”), as opposed to his more troubling recent persona. In the 90s, you’d have bet good money against the band growing older this gracefully, yet here we are with another reflective and thought-provoking set.
