For a band who have continually reinvented themselves over the years, from the young androgynous punk upstarts who gave us Generation Terrorists, to the virtiolic The Holy Bible era, and the Britpop conquering albums Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, the Manic Street Preachers 14th studio LP The Ultra Vivid Lament still carries with it a big surprise.

Throughout their 35-year career, across all their various stages, the Manics have always been a guitar band. Each incarnation of their sound has been driven by frontman James Dean Bradfield’s compositions, ably supported by his cousin, drummer Sean Moore. Though bassist Nicky Wire and lyricist and guitarist Richey Edwards, before his sad disappearance in 1995, were often the band’s mouthpieces, their spiritual leaders if you like, musically it was Bradfield and his trademark white Les Paul guitar that shaped their sound.

On The Ultra Vivid Lament, though, Bradfield has put the six string to one side and instead crafted each track on the piano, having taught himself to play over the course of lockdown. The inspiration, it seems, came from the likes of ABBA and Neil Diamond, acts who were at the forefront when the Manics themselves were kids, and the result is a set of gloriously rich songs that rank up there with some of the best the band have ever produced.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the Manics without at least some of those songs carrying a political message. Their two number one singles to date are the politically charged The Masses Against The Class and the Spanish Civil War influenced If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Ne Next, while A Design for Life, still in many ways their defining tune, explores class struggle and ideas of working class identity. 

Despite the piano-infused feel, The Ultra Vivid Lament is no different. Lead single Orwellian takes aim at the now endemic corruption of language to fuel political ideologies, Bradfield cooing that “Everywhere you look, everywhere you turn / The future fights the past, the books begin to burn / Words wage war, meanings being missed / I'll walk you through the apocalypse” against a preposterously catchy piano hook and thumping riff, while Don’t Let The Night Divide Us urges that “We may use peace or violence / We may wage war or silence”. 

Album opener Still Snowing In Sapporo is a beautiful and atmospheric affair that recalls the band’s tour of Japan in 1993 (“With make-up running eyes turned towards the sky / Our hands all gripped together holding on so tight”), while The Secret He Had, featuring Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean, tells the story of sibling artists Gwen and Augustus John, with a huge pop chorus and fantastic vocal interplay.

In the years since the disappearance of Edwards, Wire has taken on the role as the band’s chief lyricist. Since the release of their last album – 2018’s Resistance Is Futile – Wire sadly lost both his parents, and running through The Ultra Vivid Lament is a heavy undercurrent of loss and a struggle for understanding, as on the riff-heavy Quest For Ancient Colour, dreamy Diapause, or acoustic Into The Waves Of Love. 

There will always be a hardcare of Manics fans who yearn for a return to the confrontational, acerbic, brutalistic days of The Holy Bible, but they’re not that band anymore. Age and experience has, understandably, changed the three of them, and the desire to keep reexploring the pain of the past must be hard to muster. As Bradfield revealed in a recent interview with the BBC, "I don't really think we want to look that deeply into things any more because we've looked there a million times and there are no answers."

The Ultra Vivid Lament instead sees the band exploring another side of their history, with nods to the triumphs of the past and a sharp focus on the uncertainty and difficulty of the times we now find ourselves in. It’s an album that is both tender and melodic, while still carrying some of the fire in the belly that made the Manics the sort of band that forced you to sit up and take notice in the first place. 

The Ultra Vivid Lament tracklist:

1. Still Snowing In Sapporo
2. Orwellian
3. The Secret He Had Missed (featuring Julia Cumming)
4. Quest For Ancient Colour
5. Don’t Let The Night Divide Us
6. Diapause
7. Complicated Illusions
8. Into The Waves Of Love
9. Blank Diary Entry (featuring Mark Lanegan)
10. Happy Bored Alone
11. Afterending

Watch the official video for The Secret He Had Missed here.

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.