Speaking in the latest issue of MOJO – available to order HERE - Manic Street Preachers discuss their new album Critical Thinking and look back across the band’s near four-decade lifespan.
“Probably we are a bit underappreciated because we never stopped,” bassist Nicky Wire tells Dorian Lynskey. “It’s the curse of being overly productive. This is our fifteenth studio album plus solo albums, greatest hits, reissues. There’s an album every two years basically. And the first four came in four years, with a manager dying and Richey disappearing. It’s like some ’60s band, isn’t it?”
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READ MORE: Every Manic Street Preachers Album Ranked!
For Wire and guitarist James Dean Bradfield, part of the key to the band’s longevity is an ingrained pessimism, always having an eye on defeat and decline even at their commercial peak in the mid-90s.
“There is a truth serum in the band that has served us very well,” says Wire. “We’ve never, ever allowed ourselves to be deluded. Failure is ingrained in the band as much as success. The biggest piss-take we have is we get in the studio and James will shout out, ‘Sounding better than ever!’ Because we know we’re not really. It’s a lie.” He smiles. “The reality is managed decline.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the pair look back to their earliest days and the first song they wrote together while still at school: Aftermath, a political missive about the miners’ strike.
“I found that when we wrote our first song together, when Richey played with us for the first time and it felt perfect,” recalls Bradfield. “I remember when we did [second single] Motown Junk, thinking, We’re a real band! I remember when Nick and Richey gave me Motorcycle Emptiness. At all those pivotal moments you know the band is the best place so you don’t want to let it go.”
Critical Thinking addresses the group’s past growing up in Blackwood, South Wales, “social nonentities” as Wire puts it, in thrall to 80s indie bands such as 10,000 Maniacs, The Cure, R.E.M., Big Country and The Smiths.
A tender exploration of teenage fandom and adult disappointment, Dear Stephen is inspired by the time in 1984 when The Smiths played Cardiff University. Wire’s mum wrote to the group explaining that her teenage son was desperate to see the band but was too ill to attend. The Smiths wrote back, with Morrissey scribbling “get well soon Nick” on a postcard. "An almost spiritual antique" is how Wire describes the note, which he recently rediscovered.
The Gang Of Four-like title track, meanwhile, is a far spikier Wire-penned rant against the self-help industry. “The phrase ‘Be your authentic self,’” says the bassist. “I mean, what a calamitous fucking idea! What do you think all the dictators and rapists are doing? They’re being their authentic selves! My authentic self is a cunty gobshite.”
Another track, Deleted Scenes finds Wire addressing the dangers of social media: “I fear myself more than anything else/the power at my fingertips.”
“It’s about the power to self-immolate on social media,” he explains, snapping his fingers. “Just like that. I worry I have the destructive tendency to actually enjoy doing it. If you’re seeking oblivion, it feels like an attractive proposal at times.”
Although at one time the most overtly left-wing of the groups storming the mainstream in the 90s, the pair admit to retreating from the political frontline somewhat in recent years. Bradfield confesses that he didn’t even vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
“It was the first time in my life that I didn’t feel like anyone deserved my vote, which is quite a pious, self-important thing to decide,” says the guitarist. “I admit that was a big mistake. I felt a little bit ashamed. I had this tantrum in my head.”
“I think we withdrew,” says Wire of the band’s political confusion at the time. “There wasn’t an answer. I think if you stop believing in yourself, it’s hard to believe in anything else…”
“I remember Nick watching film of us at Glastonbury and saying, ‘It’s all wrong. You’re acting when you’re singing!’” Get the latest issue of MOJO to read the interview in full. More info and to order a copy HERE.
Photo: Alex Lake