Manic Street Preachers return with a new single. 

Manic Street Preachers return with a new single. 

In a week of endless returns from Oasis to the Smiths not reforming story as well as Nick Cave and Primal Scream releases, it feels like the nineties all over again!  

The Manics return as poptastic and intensely urgent as ever with new song ‘Decline and Fall as a prelude to their upcoming new album that they have been recording at their own studio in Newport and at Rockfield studios just up the road. It arrives on the thirtieth anniversary of the Manics’ seminal 1994 album ‘The Holy Bible’ and their acclaimed recent tour with Suede and is their first release since 2021’s number one 14th album, The Ultrav Vivid Lament.

Manic Street Preachers return with a new single, Decline And Fall and it is a driving and gorgeous anthem that somehow shoehorns Abba and The Skids into an urgent melodic song that ultimately drips the hi fi lush sound of mid to late period Manics. It has that swirl of melancholia couched in melodic euphoria that is so much part of their greatness. The powerhouse driving backing is decorated with the piano line and James Dean Bradfield sounds as urgent as ever as he delivers the jagged poetry and Nicky Wire. There are hints of influences as ever with the Manics, but they transcend these and put their own stamp on it, and it’s a quality single yet again from the veteran band who have always been constantly great at entwining melody, emotion and guitars as machine guns thrills into slices of pop brilliance. 

Or, as the band put it…

’Musically with ‘Decline & Fall’ we tried to create forward motion – a song which harnesses the past to propel it into the future – the lyric is one of realisation and understanding – of celebrating the tiny miracles that still exist whilst accepting and embracing managed decline’