Punk Floyd

I was in a bit of quandary trying to decide which Wire album to focus on for this blog. This is a band that's been around practically forever and has made quite a lot of quality music all along the way. 

Wire also have a habit of disappearing for so long that people forget them, then roaring back with incredible, game-changing music. This is a perfect example - the best of a batch of back-to-basics blasters (all of which are excellent to begin with) released during their early 2000's reunion.

"Outdoor Miner" off Chairs Missing

But while I love a lot of their later records - The Ideal Copy and Send spring to mind - for this blog, it had to be one of the Big Three. Meaning their groundbreaking first three LPs, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154.

I chose 154. 

Now this may be a bit curious,  because while I listened to Pink Flag quite a bit in my younger days, I had only heard one track off 154 until I bought it in 1990 or so. 

But what a track it is.

I first heard "I Should Have Known Better" in the pivotal Autumn of 1979. The song haunted me for years. Though disturbingly otherwordly and futuristic, it was like something torn out of my childhood nightmares. And believe me, that's saying one fork of a lot.

In fact, it seems that Wire were so pleased with the song's descent into a JG Ballard-worthy surrealist-industrial urban nightmare, they decided to take the express back to Dystopia, with "A Touching Display," which also seems to reference Ravel's "Bolero" with its ebowed harmony guitars and stately pace. 

Don't too comfortable, though, because Wire then charge in with power chords that sound like Black Sabbath as imagined by Philip K Dick during his worst amphetamine-psychosis jags.

THE SPIRITS OF THE TIMES

Of all the years documented on this site, 1979 will always be my favorite. Why? 

Well, because that’s when I was first truly initiated in this strange and hidden world of new music. I had been exposed to a lot of it in '77 and '78, but that’s when Punk and New Wave felt like just another Seventies novelty. I wasn't shopping for novelty, I wanted something serious. 

And no one was more serious than Wire. 

Which means that 154 is not merely a collection of great songs, it’s also a time portal filled with all the currents and cross-currents of its time, as well as a testament to the fruitful postpunk dalliance with Krautrock. 

But there's plenty of native flavors on the menu as well: Colin Newman's Ray Davies-via-Syd Barrett music-hall throwbacks, Graham Lewis' Ian Curtis-via-Bowie-only-more-aggressive vibe, and plenty of Eno energy flying all over the damn place. 

Producer Mike Thorne, who was a very accomplished musician himself, played an active role in the music on 154, and his spectral keyboard playing gives the music a haunted, fever-dreamlike quality. 

Thorne's ethereal strains float like clouds over layers of Wire's electric guitar, which if anything sounds rawer and more primitive than ever.  The contrast makes for an intoxicating cocktail.

One of the best examples of this magical interplay is "The 15th." 

Note that the prominent punk rhythm guitars sound strangely muted, like they were an after-effect or an echo of the original intonation. The barre-chord changes are pure 1977, but the half-speed tempo makes you feel as if you're remembering an old punk song while walking on strange streets off your head on hallucinogens.

Then halfway through the song, Thorne drops a gentle but unsettling counterpoint over the slow-mo pogo, fluid harmonies that wash in and out like flute music coming from the room down the hall. The interplay of the tweaked-out guitars and the opiate warmth of the synths make the song simultaneously new and timeless. 

All of which is to say that you may think you’ve heard it before when you first hear the track. But that is also part of the magic of "The 15th." 

It, like many tracks on the album, are rendered cold and Germanic, yet parodoxically warm and intimate. The album has more in common with Pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd than with The Sex Pistols. In fact, at the time some critics dismissively dubbed Wire as "Punk Floyd." 

TWEAK IT ALL

Wire were firmly in the intellectual camp of the British art-school punk tradition. Musique concrete and tone poems make appearances on 154. Every single instrument is so effed around with so you start to wonder what's actually doing what. 

Though very different stylistically, 154's "tweak it all" philosophy puts it in the same camp as Simple Minds' Sister Feelings Call and Talking Heads' Remain in Light. 

In fact, I'd also put 154 far above all the other postpunk giants of '79 - Metal Box, Entertainment, Unknown Pleasure - simply because the songs are lot catchier and the whole dreamlike vibe a lot more immersive.

Wire was set to do it all again the following year, but they got dropped by EMI. Bloodied but unbowed, Newman, Thorne and Wire drummer Robert Gotobed simply reshuffled the deckhands and released A-Z under Colin Newman's flag. It's essentially every bit the fourth Wire album it was intended to be, despite the absence of Graham Lewis.

Sadly, A-Z also untroubled the charts, so Thorne went off to mine gold with Soft Cell, The The, Bronski Beat and 'Til Tuesday. Brought back to the limelight by superfans REM, Wire reemerged in 1986 with the Snakedrill EP and barring the odd hiatus, have been remarkably fruitful ever since.

If you haven't checked out their 21st century releases, I recommend you do so. Their quality-to-quantity ratio is enviably high.

Weirdly, it was the po-faced postpunk bands - Wire, PiL, Killing Joke, Swans, Mission of Burma - that seem to have had the greatest longevity while their poppier and/or populist peers fell by the wayside. It seems to be because these bands were motivated by the power of making music, not money (which they never made much of, even in their primes).

I feel - and have always felt - there's a lesson in there somewhere.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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