Manic Street Preachers announce Jools Holland appearance
Stephen Price
Manic Street Preachers have announced an appearance on this weekend’s Later With Jools Holland where they will debut a new song.
Writing on their official website and social media accounts, the iconic band shared: “Manic Street Preachers will perform a brand new song, plus latest single ‘Decline & Fall’, on Later With Jools Holland this Saturday 26th October.”
Jools will also chat to band members James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire about their other personal projects, including Nicky’s art exhibition on his love of the Polaroid image.
New material
Fresh from a run of critically-acclaimed sold out shows with Suede, ‘Decline and Fall’ is the first new material since 2021’s ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ album.
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The single adopts some of the retro-futuristic ABBA-esque sounds of their previous record met with the arena euphoria of ‘Resistance Is Futile’ and ‘Everything Must Go’ – but driven forward by the Manics’ influences of The Skids, ‘Gran Turismo’-era The Cardigans and The War On Drugs.
The band said of the song: “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”.
The Manic Street Preachers’ are frequently asked about new music.
Nicky recently told NME: “The recording is ninety per cent done, but we haven’t mixed it yet. It will be out in January or February of next year.
“It has a lot of energy, even though I don’t feel particularly energised. One of the songs is like a mixture of The Cardigans and The Skids, who are two of our favourite bands, and another sounds like Come Up And See Me [by Cockney Rebel] played by Dinosaur Jr.”
Their last release, Lifeblood 20 has been described by Nicky Wire as “our most estranged album of all” – it features two brand new remixes (CD and digital) of the album’s lead track ‘1985’, by Steven Wilson and Gwenno and is available to stream here.
Little Baby Nothings and My Little Empire
A brand new photographic book by Valerie Phillips, featuring over 200 unseen Manics photos, titled ‘Little Baby Nothings’ is out now.
Copies of the book, along with a store exclusive t-shirt bundle, are available here.
Discussing the book, Nicky said: “I’m so grateful to Valerie for those intense 20 months when she saw all the energy and ragged glory of Manic Street Preachers, and more importantly captured our little bit of history seen here in these vivid, beautiful photographs.”
Meanwhile, a powerful new exhibition by Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers has opened at a west Wales gallery, featuring a series of original works created by the Welsh music icon.
The exhibition at Narberth Museum, titled My Little Empire, features 25 new works, all revealing Nicky’s love of the Polaroid image.
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The band have teased the new song’s release date as Friday at 10am, with the Jools Holland performance set to be the first live airing.
Watch the Manic Street Preachers on Later With Jools Holland live on @bbctwo and @bbciplayer at 22.00 this Saturday (26 October).
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