Disco de Wire: “Send”

Listening to the following CD it is hard to believe that this band has been playing together in some form or another for over 25 years.This has to be the best Wire album outside the initial 3.I am suprise how this CD sounds alot like some of the Chicago area bands that were inspired by Wire in the 80's like Big Black,(Early)Naked Raygun and The Effigies.This is one of the most bombastic albums I heard since Big Black's 'Songs abouth F***N.The music is very abrasive,like Big Black's sound.The sound of this CD is kinda like Low-Fi/Hi-Fi industrial with Guitars that sounds like they were recorded by plugging straight into the mixing board.The vocals sounds like primitive version of Wire's 154 era.So if your a fan of Wire,Big Black,The Fall,Gang of Four I could not praise this cd enough so please go out and buy it maybe we can encourage others to start making decent music again.

This is Wire's first full-length in over a decade and gone are the New Order-ish stylings of their late 80's incarnation. "Send" isn't simply a redo of their first phase either. There are hints of "Pink Flag" in all the songs here, but it lacks the minimalistic sound of that release. From the opening of the CD to the end you are bombarded with a solid-state wash of guitars that pound out repititious licks and are topped with aggressive, often distorted vocals. They haven't completely lost their affinity to electronics and the better tracks on the CD tend to be the ones where techno elements begin to creep in. Note: 7 of the 11 tracks are from Read & Burn 1+2.

While nominally a new album, Send is really a compillation of tracks from Wire's two recent EPs Read & Burn 1 & 2, assembled with four additional new songs. As such, it serves as an efficient introduction to Wire, phase III, but it's also but uneven.

The stongest tracks are culled from Read & Burn 1. On this release, Wire dramatically reconfigured the minimalist-punk blueprint they created with Pink Flag (1977), adding a huge dose of amphetamines in the form intense distortion, with just a hint of industrial influence. For a group in the third decade of their career (with most members well into their 50s), R & B 1 was remarkably vital relevant (though with all it's noisy intensity, it did take awhile for it to sink in with me).

On Read & Burn 2, Wire started to fall into a familiar pattern: After Pink Flag, Wire became progressively more difficult and deliberately arty, and made less accessible music (esp in the late 80s and early 90s). Read & Burn 2 follows a similar blueprint to it's prodecessor, but Wire employ greater use of studio effects, and the songs are more measured (much like Chairs Missing and 154). While this does does give R&B 2 more texture, it also saps much of the spontaneity, humor and accessibilty that made R&B 1 so much fun.

Unsurpringly, the best material on Send is from R&B 1. "In the Art of Stopping" and "Comet" are taut, catchy, songs driven by Gilbert's menacing guitar, Lewis & Gotobed's propulsive foundation, all put home with Newman's sardonic, funny vocals (it's refreshing that Wire have rediscovred a sense of humor). Unfortunately, only three songs here are from R&B 1, and the remaining material becomes a little tedious, and just kind of blends together (though "99.9" is ominously hypnotic, and the buzz-saw guitar on "Mr. Marx's Table" make it moderately compelling). It's also unfortunate that the best track from R&B 2, the melodic, almost poppy "Trash/Treasure", has been excluded from this collection.

For Wire fans curious about the band's recent output who don't want to shell out the extra money for both R&B 1 and 2, Send is an efficient, functional compillation. However, it does hint that Wire might be digressing into a familiar pattern of forsaking the entertaining aspects of their approach in favor of deliberate artiness, resulting in less emotionally accessible music.

It's easy to hear music out of context these days. We can hear something no wave or post-punk from the late seventies or early eighties and think to ourselves "gosh, weren't they ahead of their time?" I thought that when I heard Wire's "The 15th" from their 1979 album "154". I thought Wire effortlessly forecasted future music since I already knew what the future sounded like.

But have you even wondered who is ahead of their time in the here and now? I have. In the distant future, what 2000-20009 music will we put on and think "man, they were so ahead of their time!"?

I think it's Wire. Again. "Send" sounds like something that was beamed from the future to slap us present day people in the face. This could be the most aggressive music I've ever heard. I can't get into metal and some of the teen angst of the nineties just struck me as silly. "Send" absolutely bulldozes stuff like that. I just love how Robert Gotobed sounds like a human metronome and how Bruce Gilbert makes his guitar sound like a buzz saw. And Colin Newman sings like he knows he's going to die the next day, leaving nothing to chance on barnstormers like "Read & Burn" and "Spent." "Comet" sounds like a celestial body striking the earth.

There was a time when my daughter would only eat chocolate goldfish crackers. I wanted her to balance her diet out a little bit, but I knew that any interference on my part would just foul things up. And like those chocolate crackers, I find myself childishly queuing up "Send" on my mp3 player every day after work. Sure, my musical diet can stand to be altered a bit, but this stuff is just perfect for my bus ride home. Especially when I don't want to listen to the chatter all around me.

Wire have managed this again. They are back for a third time and it is even better than the second come-back.