In our current era where a lot of angsty art-punk sounds like old Wire, Wire would get tsk-tsked for sounding like old Wire, so they’re doing the best that Wire can do in this situation.
The first three Wire albums—Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154—make up a masterpiece trilogy of art-punk/experimental pop. Hailing from England, the original lineup of Colin Newman (vocals, guitar), Graham Lewis (bass, vocals), Bruce Gilbert (guitar), and Robert Gotobed (drums) set the post-punk bar, influencing everyone from the Cure to Sonic Youth. My post-154 Wire timeline was vaguely aware that the band had re-formed in the late 1980s and made music that people (stoned girlfriends, snobby ex-boyfriends, know-it-all uncles, amused record-store clerks, et al.) shrugged off as being “pretty bad.” I assumed they’d fallen like an underground Weezer parable…
