I'm still a Manics fan and want to like their albums, I really do. So it doesn't give me any pleasure to report that their latest, Critical Thinking, is - if you do indeed think critically, seeing through sentiment, PR hokum and Wire's own track-by-track guide supplied to reviewers, which seems to relate to a record that exists only in his imagination - a real dud. Buzz review here.
Interestingly, the Guardian's Phil Mongredien has given a very similar characterisation of the album, though considerably more generous/charitable in his evaluation. "Growing older ... gracefully" is one way of putting it; "growing older boringly" is another.
Like the very fine 'The Secret He Had Missed' on predecessor The Ultra Vivid Lament, there's a track inspired by Welsh-born painter Gwen John - and more specifically by Sue Hubbard's poetic biography God's Little Artist, which Wire's wife bought at the recent exhibition of John's work held at Bath's Holborne Museum. Any opportunity to plug what is a marvellous little volume.
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