Manic Street Preachers‘ bassist Nicky Wire has shared a new solo track ‘Contact Sheets’. Check it out below.

• READ MORE: Manic Street Preachers: “We talked ourselves through oblivion”

The bassist, lyricist and polaroid artist of the Welsh rock veterans released his solo debut ‘I Killed The Zeitgeist’, and fans have been expecting news of the “modern, electronic, soothsaying” follow-up record for some years now.

“It’s done,” Wire told NME in 2021. “Whatever, I might bury it in a fucking pond somewhere, I might burn it, I might do it mail order, I might do it on Bandcamp. It’s very fucking fragile. It’s got some very off-kilter modern jazz and some C-86 indie vibes to it.”

He continued: There’s some ‘Bitches Brew’-era Miles Davis in there, some obscure trumpet-led, and some songs that just sound like The Shop Assistants. It features Gav [Fitzjohn] on the trumpet. Sean [Moore, drums and trumpet] refuses to play. He says his lip has gone.”

Now, Wire has shared the first taster of new material on Bandcamp – with ‘Contact Sheets’ delivering on his promise of hazy C-86-inspred sounds, with lyrics typically nostalgic and elegiac.

Contact Sheets by Nicky Wire

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Manics frontman James Dean Bradfield previously revealed that Wire had been recording his new LP while the singer was at work on his own previous solo album, ‘Even In Exile‘.

“I’d have our studio one day, he’d have it the next, he asked me to play a guitar solo on one of his tracks, and yeah – his stuff is sounding great,” Bradfield told NME. “There was one song on there that was fucking amazing but hard to describe. It was very modern, very electronic, and very soothsaying and prophetic.”

This came after Wire teased to NME that he’d be releasing his own material via fan request only. “All I’ve got to do is get 500 CDs made, print off a lot of polaroids and hand-make them all,” he said.

The Manics have recently been posting images to social media of the band at work on the follow-up to 2021’s acclaimed ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament‘.

Meanwhile, the band will be embarking on a handful of UK dates this summer. Check them out below and see tickets and details here.

JUNE
15 – Bath, Forum
18 – Isle Of Wight Festival
21-25 – Glastonbury Festival

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