Manic Street Preachers ahead of Sabrina Carpenter in race for this week’s UK Number One album

nme.com:

Manic Street Preachers have moved ahead of Sabrina Carpenter in the race for the UK Number One album this week.The Welsh group are making the sprint for the top of the charts with their recently released record ‘Critical Thinking’, which marks their 15th studio album and the follow-up to 2022’s ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’.If they make the top spot by the end of the week, it will mark the Manics’ third chart-topping UK album.

They first hit the milestone back in 1998 with their ‘This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours’, then did so again with their aforementioned 14th LP.Hot on their heels for the milestone, however, is US pop sensation Sabrina Carpenter, whose massive summer album ‘Short N’ Sweet’ is back on the charts after a new deluxe edition arrived last week, and is currently sitting in second place.

Just 2,700 units separate them, according to Official Charts.The Wombats are currently in third place with ‘Oh! The Ocean’, which has become their fifth album to make the Top 10 in the UK, and fourth position is held by PARTYNEXTDOOR and Drake for their collaborative album ‘$ome $exy $ongs 4 U’.

If it holds its place, the latter could signal the second Top 10 for PARTYNEXTDOOR, and the 14th Top 10 for the Canadian rapper.Last week, Manics’ latest album was given a glowing four-star review from NME, with Andrew Trendell describing the record as one that begins with “the motor-mouthed, sabre-rattling bassist and lyricist [Nicky] Wire aghast and rudderless in a fractured world”.“Sonically, ‘Critical Thinking’ has touches of the European modernist propulsion of 2014 renaissance record ‘Futurology’ and the graceful ABBA pop flourishes of 2021 predecessor ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’,” it read.