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- Summary: The 14th full-length studio release for the Welsh rock band features guest appearances from Julia Cumming and Mark Lanegan.
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- Record Label: Columbia
- Genre(s): Pop/Rock
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 14
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Mixed: 2 out of 14
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Negative: 0 out of 14
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Aug 30, 2021Their 14th album rakes over the wreckage and emerges as a generous, deeply humane mission statement: it’s an album of profound melancholy, of course, but also one lit up with heroic, big-pop colour. Ultra-vivid indeed.
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Oct 4, 2021No longer urgent yet still passionate, the band conjure a sense of operatic melancholy on The Ultra Vivid Lament that feels reassuring, even consoling.
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UncutAug 30, 2021It's clear we're in for an introspective ride, though the more major-key, upbeat nature of many of the record's arrangements belie these melancholy undertones. [Oct 2021, p.29]
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Sep 9, 2021In guitarist-singer James Dean Bradfield and drummer and multi-instrumentalist Sean Moore, they boast two incredibly gifted musicians whose dense arrangements glitter with intricate interplay.
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Sep 13, 2021The result is an artfully realised exercise in melancholic, grown-up pop with textures that owe much to the Swedes’ later work. It’s also a welcome return to form, after 2018’s water-treading Resistance Is Futile.
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Sep 8, 2021The Ultra Vivid Lament is impregnated with an array of influences ranging from ‘80s pop to ‘90s arena rock to the band’s own (mostly) splendid legacy. There’s also a certain penchant for experimentalism, which takes the listener back to forgotten currents of post-rock aesthetics, even though the band is always commercially careful not to push the boundaries too much.
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Sep 2, 2021It’s an album that sounds very little like their last, and in that sense – despite its myriad reference points – The Ultra Vivid Lament is a Manic Street Preachers record, through and through.
Score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 0 out of 3
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Sep 28, 2021This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
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Sep 12, 2021A surprising and extremely melodic record. Melancholic yet uplifting. A beautiful and cohesive album, perhaps their best of the 2000s.
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Sep 21, 2021
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