Vinyl Record

Manic Street Preachers - The Ultra Vivid Lament

Manic Street Preachers - The Ultra Vivid Lament on LP vinyl. A 2021 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.

LP · 2021

Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.

Buyer notes: 2021 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.

The Ultra Vivid Lament is the 2021 Manic Street Preachers album that begins from piano rather than guitar, and that shift changes the emotional temperature of the band. Written and recorded around the stillness and anxiety of the early 2020s, it turns their familiar political and historical obsessions toward ageing, memory, civic exhaustion and the strange glamour of decline. Orwellian sets the tone with a bright melody carrying dark public-language dread; The Secret He Had Missed turns the story of Welsh artists Augustus and Gwen John into a duet with Julia Cumming; Blank Diary Entry brings Mark Lanegan into a late-album shadow; Afterending and Still Snowing in Sapporo let melancholy widen rather than explode. It is a polished record, but not a complacent one: the Manics sound reflective, theatrical and alert to the cost of surviving their own history.

The Ultra Vivid Lament matters because it gave the band a major late-career chapter rather than a routine continuation. Its 2021 success showed that their piano-led, elegiac mode could still connect broadly while keeping Nicky Wire's lyrical restlessness intact.

This is a strong modern Manics title for collectors who already know the 1990s landmarks and want the mature counterpart. It is less volatile than Know Your Enemy, but its value lies in poise: a band using melody, guests and historical allusion to make lateness feel deliberate.

Piano-led alternative rock with bright choruses, reflective lyrics, clean production, guest vocal contrasts, orchestral shading and a wistful late-career glow.

Recommended for: Manic Street Preachers fans drawn to their melodic side; Collectors of late-career albums that add a real new chapter; Listeners who like political pop-rock with elegance and melancholy.

What year was The Ultra Vivid Lament released? The Ultra Vivid Lament was released in 2021 as the band's fourteenth studio album. How does it differ from earlier Manics albums? It was initially shaped around piano, giving the songs a more elegiac and polished character than the band's guitar-first records. Who guests on The Ultra Vivid Lament? Julia Cumming appears on The Secret He Had Missed, while Mark Lanegan appears on Blank Diary Entry.