Wire "Read & Burn 03" (Pink Flag)
By Tim Bugbee
Tuesday. Jan 15, 12:18 AM
One of the most important bands from the early punk era still shines.

Not enough bands get credit for their public service record. No, I'm not talking about media whores like Bono (though I do think he is well-intentioned) or Neil Young via Farm Aid: I'm talking about Wire. By the simple act of reforming after a decade-plus layoff (prefaced by dicey ventures into synth-land) and absolutely juggernauting their way through shows, it was impetus for the well-received Mission Of Burma reunion to follow suit (you can imagine Prescott, Miller, and Conley in the audience at The Roxy, looking dumbfounded at each other mid-set and exclaiming “holy shit!”). And for that, Gilbert, Newman, Lewis, and Gotobed, I heartily salute you. The Read & Burn series jolted the original art punkers back to the public consciousness, and an excellent record (Send) followed. Then the Wire camp closed down again, the scent grown cold. In the ensuing five year period, the band was busy tending to the carefully restored presentations of their previous work, in both audio and video, but also managed to pull together a third installment of the Read & Burn series of EPs.

The aforementioned dalliance with keyboard-based dance music has been soundly rejected, and it's back to the great sound which made Wire one of the most important bands from the early punk era (I still get a chuckle from the fact that Harvest, best known for its woolly folk and psych records, put out their first two LPs)... you know, the sound which Elastica inadvertently used and subsequently added to Wire's coffers after the blatant rip of "Three Girl Rhumba" became a point of contention. Having fully outlasted Justine and company, the band's output continues to perfectly suit its chosen name: the music is singular, bristles, has immense tensile strength, and becomes stronger as individual elements are wrapped together. Unlike the previous two EPs, parts of which were used to create Send, the third installment is meant to stand-alone, and none of these four songs will be on the forth-coming album.

Starting off with "23 Years Too Late" (at nearly 10 minutes, the longest song they've ever recorded), it sets up the listener with an insistent yet emotionless spoken word recounting, which yields to a driving chorus that is vintage Wire; the metronomic drumming of Richard Grey (né Gotobed) keeps the song on target and time so that there won't be another second tallied to the tardy column. Any drummer who has a tendency to overplay should be forced to listen from 6:45 – 7:10 on a loop until the error of their ways is clear to them, and they see the light of a minimal yet effective approach. "Our Time" is a dour look at the present, Newman's vocals sounding a bit like Peter Garrett if he were a Pom instead of an Aussie. The third track ("No Warning Given") evokes the strongest whiff of the late ‘70s sound, with the guitar chorus line matching quite nicely with what Buzzcocks did on "Airwaves Dream," and a sleepy "Desert Diving" closes out the not-quite half hour EP. Bring on the new record!
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Tim Bugbee

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