Down the Rabbit Hole: Wire's Essential Trilogy
By 1977, a distinct musical formula had long since emerged among the mainstays of London’s punk scene: Get pissed about something, pick three chords, and play them like your life depends on it. On one end of the spectrum, being “punk” was associated with things like violence, crime, delinquency, and general civil disobedience. Bands like Crass championed anarchism and spat in the face of authority; they wore studs and chains, and were basically anti-everything.
Existing modestly at the other end of this spectrum was Wire.
While most of their contemporaries were busy ranting about socioeconomic injustice and the Queen, Wire lectured the public on far more important subjects like GPS coordinates and houseflies. They dressed like bankers. Their songs were slow, miminal, and austere. They were among the first punk rockers to incorporate synthesizers and unconventional arrangements into their sound, laying the foundations for post-punk before punk v.1 had even fully materialized in mainstream consciousness.
Although they’ve released 17 LPs to date, the real game changers (and the only ones that really matter) were their first three, “Pink Flag,” Chairs Missing,” and “154.” Each of these is a little stranger and more obtuse than the last.
“I don't know what we would have sounded like if we didn't hear Pink Flag. It was like that NYC band Richard Hell and the Voidoids without the studio gimmickry. Wire was way more 'econo' with the instrumentation and the radical approach to song structure. And the way Wire wrote words were artistic without being elitist; some of the slang was trippy, too. All the 'old' conventions from all the other 'old' bands went out the window after we heard Wire. They were big-time liberating for us.” — Mike Watt of the Minutemen
Their first record Pink Flag might’ve been released the same year as the Sex Pistol’s Never Mind the Bollocks - the record that many consider to be the punk era’s defining gem - but that’s just about all the two have in common. Pink Flag’s average song length is around one and a half minutes; Bollocks’ shortest song is three minutes long. At times, Pink Flag centers itself on groove (see: Lowdown, Strange), and puts the pedal to the metal at others (12XU, Surgeon’s girl); Bollocks doesn’t offer much variety, opting rather to stay rooted in an über-typical midtempo stomp for the album’s entire duration. Perhaps this is a good time to express an unpopular opinion that’s been festering inside me for years:
Bollocks is just average. For reasons I’ll never fully understand, it’s commonly hailed as the greatest punk rock ever made. But the only good songs on it are Bodies and Holidays in the Sun, and it’s hard to ignore what an asshole John Lydon is and always has been.
Back to Wire: In 1978, they released their next LP, Chairs Missing. At the time, the term “chairs missing” was a common British slang term used to describe a psychiatrically disturbed individual (if someone’s chairs were missing, chances are their marbles were too). This title sets the tone for the record perfectly, with lyrical themes including but not limited to: madness, alienation, anxiety, despair, isolation, and disease.
Chairs Missing was a step up from Pink Flag in terms of overall production quality; you can really hear the band learning to fully utilize the studio environment on songs like I am the Fly, French Filmed Blurred, whose colorful yet harsh sonic palettes were more or less unheard of in punk at the time.
With 154, Wire took the avant-experimentalism of Chairs Missing and followed it to its logical conclusion. By this point, the group’s formerly harsh and distorted guitar sound had now become almost indiscernible from the album’s countless layers of soft-synth textures. Frontman Colin Newman had opted for a vocal approach that bordered on spoken word and had taken to verbally announcing their choruses (see: Map Ref 41). This was Wire at their most inaccessible; it was almost as if they were purposefully trying to alienate their fans. Nonetheless, the group’s radio-friendly foundations remained subtly intact underneath the album’s cold and icy exterior.
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154 marked the end of Wire’s “essential trilogy.” In 1979, the group split amidst financial troubles and creative differences. Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis quickly formed Dome (if you couldn’t stomach 154, wait until you hear this) and later Cupol, and Colin Newman released a few underwhelming solo albums.
Wire eventually reformed in 1985, but it just wasn’t the same. Their newfound affinity for electronic music made them sonically unrecognizable to many of their fans. On one tour, they even jokingly hired a Wire cover band to open for them and play their old material, at which point many fans actually mistook them for the actual Wire.
For those new to Wire, start with Pink Flag, and continue chronologically until they lose you in the weeds of electronica (for me, it was their fourth record The Ideal Copy). While they aren’t exactly ear-pleasers, there’s a unique and intangible quality to those first three records that consistently keeps me coming back for more. Ever noticed how the music that breaks all the rules is always the most fun? — Jackson Todd
