On the Stereo: Manic Street Preachers, Sunny War, Patterson Hood, Gary Louris, Tate McRae, the Delines
Manic Street Preachers—Critical Thinking [2025]
Critical Thinking, the fifteenth (!!!) studio album by Manic Street Preachers, pivots upon "Dear Stephen," a song addressed to Morrissey from Nicky Wire, the band's chief lyricist. Wire implores his teenage idol to once again embrace the ideals he espoused in the Smiths, reminding Morrissey "it's so easy to hate, it takes guts to be kind." Another lyric from The Queen Is Dead hangs over "Dear Stephen" as well as the rest of Critical Thinking, an album where the Manics ponder the question "Has the world changed or have I changed?" Morrissey's sharp swing toward the right is a yardstick to measure the distance from the 20th Century to the 21st, a yawning gap that can also be felt in Wire's rejection of the power of positive affirmations on the album's title track. Raised on dogeared paperbacks instead of online forums, the Manics prize empathy cultivated through art, history, and political theory, a set of beliefs that animate both their coiled rage and their anthemic balladeering. Like The Ultra Vivid Lament before it, Critical Thinking favors softer, polished surfaces and keening melodies, qualities that made the Manics seem oddly older than their years in the late '90s but now suit their skin. Firmly ensconced in their fifties, the Manics are aware of all the distance they've run, even if they're somewhat puzzled by their current location. Occasionally, the band takes a look over their shoulder: "Decline and Fall" samples Squeeze's "Cool for Cats," "Being Baptised" is inspired by the time James Dean Bradfield spent with New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint on an episode of BBC's Songwriters' Circle in 2011. Most of the time, they reside in the discomfort of the modern moment. Bradfield's handful of lyrics offset Wire's rueful ruminations of digital disconnection and conspiratorial conformity, creating a patina of hope on an album that's otherwise quite aware that the cultural centers of the 20th Century no longer hold.
The Delines—Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom [2025]
The Delines are fully aware of the paradox at the heart of their band: the stories they tell are dark, the music they make is soothing. That contradiction is suggested in the very title of Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom, a phrase that's attached to a story about a pair of mismatched miscreants who manage to "always get out before it falls through." Songwriter/guitarist Willy Vlautin composed the tune when singer Amy Boone challenged him to write just one love song. He succeeded in a fashion. "Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom," like the rest of its accompanying record, tells a tale of characters who live on the fringes of America, a place where they become consumed by all the country's mess and glory. There are no tidy endings in a Delines song yet the group plays a sumptuous after-hours country-soul; in their hands, desolate desperation can seem soothing. That's especially true on Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom. Maybe Boone's directive to Vlautin is the difference, maybe it's the fact that a decade deep into their career, the quintet easily slides into an idiosyncratic groove, occupying the twilight space where the head and heart intersect.
Sunny War—Armageddon in a Summer Dress [2025]
Armageddon in a Summer Dress is a fitting title for this, Sunny War's sequel to Anarchist Gospel, the 2023 album that moved the singer/songwriter definitively away from her folk roots. (I reviewed the record for Pitchfork a couple of years ago). Working once again with Andrija Tokic