Manic Street Preachers released their 15th studio album Critical Thinking.

The album celebrates that conflicting ideas collide, with unflinching lyrics that explore the soul and some of the most direct, addictive melodies the band has ever recorded.”

Nicky Wire says, “This is a record of opposites colliding - of dialectics trying to find a path of resolution. While the music fizzes and has an elegiac uplift, most of the words are about the cold analysis of the self, with the exception of James' (Dean Bradfield) three lyrics that seek and hopefully find answers in people, their memories, language and beliefs.”