Wire Object 47 Review On Dusted

Artist: Wire
Album: Object 47
Label: Pink Flag
Review date: Jul. 7, 2008
Original post

Even though this is Wire's 47th recording (counting EPs, singles, live albums and god knows what else), the band's reputation still mostly rests on its three groundbreaking albums in the late 1970s: Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154. When people say that something "sounds like Wire," they mean it sounds like these three records – either brash and fast and loud like the first two, or tentatively melodic, experimental and synthy like the third. They forget, for the most part, that Wire itself didn't sound like Wire for much of the late ’80s and early ’90s, that in those dance-influenced, synthetic years, Wire actually sounded more like New Order. A series of fractious post-2000 reunion recordings – the three Read and Burn EPs and the summing full-length Send – may have allowed us to forget that Wire had its pop side, its new wave side, its technology-fascinated dance side. If nothing else, Object 47 serves as a reminder that no one should ever assume they know what the next Wire album will sound like, only that it will differ from the last.

One difference is immediate. This is the first Wire album without guitarist Bruce Gilbert, a member since the beginning and one of its leading proponents of noise. So when Object 47 brings its pop melodies to the front and shoves its droning, clanking, turbulence down into the mix, as it does for the first half of the album, fans of that classic Wire sound will be cursing Gilbert’s departure.

The fact is, though, that the first five songs on Object 47 exist in an almost surreally clean sonic space. Even the edges that might be rough in live performance are subordinated with antiseptic washes. Listen to how the abrasive crank of bass slips down below the singing in opening salvo "One of Us," almost subliminal under a slick, late-1980s new wave melody. There's subversion in the lyrics and maybe in the deepest rumbles underneath, but the song feels too accessible, too easy, too bouncy. "Mekon Headman,” too, taunts with droning, distorted guitars roiling under pop surfaces. You hear them as if through layers of sterile gauze. With "Four Long Years," the slinky, minimalist percussion at the start makes you wonder if the musically omnivorous Colin Newman and crew have been sampling some dubstep – that is, until the Depeche Mode synths bubble up.

The first half of Object 47 would, in fact, be easy to dismiss as lightweight and over-eager to please, lesser fragments from a once great band … if you ignored the second half. The album takes a shocking 180°. On "Hard Currency," the drums crack right up near the surface, the circling, distorted guitars and hard-pulsing bass build genuine heat under a serene façade. For the first time on the record, you feel surrounded by three-dimensional sensation. "Patient Flees," while softer, is melodic in an idiosyncratic way, more like Syd Barrett than XTC. And the two closing cuts, "Are You Ready?" and "All Fours" are tough and abrasive and punishing, full body blows at last.

Various people have tried to explain to me why I find Object 47 so frustrating. One, Bill Meyer from Dusted, said it sounds like it was recorded via file trading, as if none of these guys were ever in the same room. Another, an ex-editor, said that Wire's super-clean material always took longer to warm to than its art punk and that I should give it time. Maybe, but my inclination is to forget all that and just play the last four tracks over and over. After 47 recordings, 30 years in music and at least three self-reinventions, who can blame me for cherry picking the good stuff?

By Jennifer Kelly

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Wire's Read & Burn 03 Rates 7.2 On Pitchfork.

After a four year hibernation Wire have returned with a new addition to the Read & Burn series. Expect a new full length album sometime next year.

Wire
Read & Burn 03
[Pink Flag; 2007]
Rating: 7.2
Online review

Wire are right where they want to be. Thirty years after their debut album kicked off a brilliant initial run of three albums, they're respected and independent enough to work free of the usual recording industry constraints, taking all the time they want to work on side projects and let their ideas form fully before committing anything to tape. This essentially ensures that anything they release under the Wire aegis will be at least worthy of the name, and the only pressure to produce is self-imposed.

How patient have they been? It's hard to believe it's been five years since Wire released the first two Read & Burn EPs, which were partially compiled in 2003 on the Send album in the U.S. Those EPs mostly ignored the innovative but sometimes unsatisfying electronic music Wire had made during its first reunion, from 1986 to 1991, returning instead to the bracing immediacy and brevity of their earliest music, but with a decidedly modern sound. Read & Burn 03 is something quite different altogether for Wire, a 25-minute EP with four songs that don't seem much like anything they've ever done.

The production here feels close to the first two Read & Burn volumes, but it's used to much different ends. Opener "23 Years Too Late" is nearly 10 minutes long and balances contrasting spoken and sung sections. The spoken sections are dominated by a warm, rounded synthesizer that slowly oscillates behind deep-voiced, poetic intonations-- on the whole, they sound like a British documentarian sucked back to the beatnik era. The sung portions are more what we've come to expect from Wire v.3.0, with a slapping drum part, gurgling bass line, and strangely processed guitars that cushion Colin Newman's layered vocals from the rhythm. The song eventually slips into an ambient coda descended from the band's earlier textural experiments on 1979's 154 and some of their late-80s albums.

The other three songs feel slightly more familiar. "Our Time" is late-period Wire in slow motion, with the drums and bass holding down a crawling tempo as Newman's vocal squirms under a blanket of effects and guitars seesaw through the mix. On "No Warning Given", the tempo is back up for an ultra-deadpan Newman delivery fringed by a cloud of ambient and guitar, which hardens on the chorus. The sonic details are interesting, with Robert synthGotobed's ride cymbal and snare drum becoming clearer when the rest of the instruments begin to bleed together into a wash. The final song, "Desert Driving", uses a basic loud/soft dynamic, with melodic bass in the verses and grinding guitar in the chorus, though Newman's vocal remains even throughout.

Throughout the disc, there's a curious lack of treble-- most of the sound is mid-range with a reasonably thick bass presence-- and it gives the record a very odd character while somewhat hindering its dynamic range. It's not quite Wire at their best, but it's an interesting expansion of their range, which, if word from the band is to be believed, isn't necessarily a sign of things to come. They've claimed none of these songs will appear on the next Wire album, which should be just over the horizon. That's good, because I prefer Wire unpredictable and willing to follow an idea almost anywhere.

-Joe Tangari, November 16, 2007

Wire Makes Pitchfork News.

Wire Announce New Read & Burn EP
If the much-loved genius-punks of Wire were thirty years ahead of their time at the time of 1977's unspeakably great Pink Flag, that would mean we're all just catching up with them now (I'm looking at you, every "post-punk" band out there today). And, as such, that makes a Wire EP in the '07 the sound of the 2030s. Care to gaze into the future? Nab Read & Burn 3 when it drops November 12 on the band's own Pinkflag imprint.

Read & Burn 03 is the first in their series of EPs since the second installment dropped in late 2002. And, unlike past Read & Burns, we're assured that this material isn't going to wind up on the next Wire LP (as was the case on 2003's Send). Didja hear that? There's gonna be another Wire album in the foreseeable future! Not to mention they've gotta do seven more EPs to justify having that 0 in there holding the place for double digits. Wooo 2037!

Read & Burn 03:

01 23 Years Too Late
02 Our Time
03 No Warning Given
04 Desert Driving

Wingtip Sloat Reviewed On Pitchfork.

Fifteen years down the road Wingtip Sloat finally recieves some much deserved recognition.

Wingtip Sloat
Add This to Rhetoric
[VHF; 2007]
Rating: 8.3

As is often the case with concurrent, like-minded bands, a lot of the underground rock groups of the early 1990s felt pretty similar at the time, but eventually splintered widely. Some ventured above ground (Pavement, Sebadoh), some followed unbeaten paths (Sun City Girls, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282), and some ended up frozen in time (Trumans Water, Fly Ashtray). A rare few left behind music that remains inextricably tied to the era, yet is somehow transcendent too.

Virginia's Wingtip Sloat were that kind of band. Their brainy brand of indie/punk/grunge/math, married as it was to pre-computer recording and pre-dot-com slackdom, could only have happened in the early 90s. Yet it sounds uncannily fresh today, as if high-rises and strip malls shot up around the group's basement studio without tarnishing the beer-drenched walls and tobacco-stained bathroom, leaving their fantastic sound echoing there, perfectly preserved and surprisingly undated. You can hear that decently on the band's two later albums, 1995's Chewyfoot and 1998's If Only For the Hatchery. But the most convincing proof has up to now gathered dust on early, out-of-print 7"'s and cassettes.

Add This to Rhetoric collects those artifacts, forging a kind of living, sweating time capsule. As for what it actually sounds like, that's best left to Sloat's Patrick Foster, who in his liner notes calls the perfectly-titled "I Wish I'd Been There to Make It a Cliché" the prototypical Sloat song. "It's all there," he rightly boasts. "Arch/true/ironic song title, stop-start nervous discharge, chaos, self-referencing lyrics, kick-axe drumming, a gut-punching bass, a guitar hanging on for dear life and a ridiculous coda that even made us laugh most of the time." To which I'd add a proggy use of shifting tempos, an affinity for overlapping vocals, and a snarling energy more openly indebted to punk than anything Pavement would've ever copped to.

Otherwise, Wingtip Sloat and Pavement's influences were pretty similar, from the Velvet Underground across to the Fall and Wire and up through the Swell Maps, the Clean and Tall Dwarfs. But in contrast to Pavement's sly dodges, Wingtip Sloat owned up to their borrowings. Hence the inclusion here of their irresistible takes on the Swell Maps' "Read About Seymour", the Clean's "Anything Could Happen", Tall Dwarfs' "Beauty", and, in a nice show of team loyalty, Sun City Girls' drunken "Kill the Klansmen".

But Wingtip Sloat's originals burn most brightly through the haze of intervening years. Their 1991 debut 7", which opens the album, is basically perfect, four tracks full of rhythmic turns, spilling guitars, and savvy vocals. Sloat followed that up in 1992 with a 12-track double 7". Here the band's manic three-minute songs sit snugly next to one-minute toss-offs, much the way a stoned conversation turns profound musings and fleeting babble into sides of the same coin. (Such wordplay was a skill the group honed through their "pre-blog post-punk racing form" Sweet Portable You, which printed stories, rants, and other oblique ramblings under the guise of record reviews).

The rest of Add This to Rhetoric doesn't quite hit the same highs, but it's never less than compelling. The band continually finds the kind of mini-epiphanies that can only come from basement music made outside the sterilizing light of pro studios and promo budgets. That effect is summed perfectly by the album's back cover, a track listing made simply by piling up the individual, hand-decorated cassettes each song was recorded on. It's enough to transport you back to a time when cassettes and handwriting still mattered. But Add This to Rhetoric is no nostalgic reverie; it's less like faded ink than wet paint, still dripping with vivid sounds and ideas.
-Marc Masters, August 17, 2007