If Chairs Missing saw Wire exploring the possibilities offered by the recording studio, on 154 they took fuller advantage of that environment. Indeed, Wire often bewildered live audiences by playing unrecorded tracks rather than the numbers people expected to hear. Although Chairs Missing had been released only months before, live sets included a significant amount of material that would appear on 154. for the first time and, in March 1979, toured Europe with Roxy Music. Songs were being written and jettisoned at a considerable rate and Wire were gigging relentlessly. Wire albums usually feature one near-perfect pop song and Chairs Missing's 'Outdoor Miner' almost became a hit, until it was scuppered by a payola scandal at EMI. With Thorne playing keyboards and producing, this was a more complex, multi-dimensional record that supplemented Pink Flag's harsh minimalism with dense, occasionally unsettling atmospherics. Although the phrase 'early Pink Floyd' was uttered dismissively in some quarters, it was well-received. The album met with critical acclaim and a follow-up was recorded in spring 1978.Ĭhairs Missing was a radical departure. Pink Flag's 21 highly original tracks (each averaging just over a minute-and-a-half) compressed and twisted rock into often jagged, taut shapes. Produced by Thorne, 1977's amphetamine-paced Pink Flag found Wire taking punk to extremes while also keeping an ironic distance from it by introducing elements of tension and abstraction.

By then, with Newman writing most of the music, they were eager to record before they lost interest in material, abandoned it, and moved on a pattern that would come to define the group. Thorne included two Wire tracks and was then instrumental in bringing the band to EMI in September. Wire met EMI's Mike Thorne, who was recording groups for a live punk album, The Roxy, London WC2. A gig at the Roxy in early 1977 proved auspicious. Wire began playing dates in London and, having ousted Gill, started from scratch, writing new material and taking a more pared-down, experimental approach. Subsequently, the three recruited bassist Graham Lewis and drummer Robert Gotobed (aka Robert Grey), and the first Wire lineup was in place. At Watford Art College in 1976, guitarists Colin Newman and George Gill formed Overload with audiovisual technician Bruce Gilbert (also on guitar). Like many punk contemporaries, Wire had roots in the art school tradition. Their restlessness paved the way for hardcore punk, post-punk, and goth, and influenced artists as diverse as Minor Threat, Guided by Voices, Helmet, and Lush, as well as the many post-punk revivalists of the 2000s and 2010s.īy the time punk arrived, British art schools had long been a hotbed of musical activity, spawning some of the nation's most innovative rock acts from the '60s onward. Through it all, Wire have never sounded exactly the same twice. Later works such as Mind Hive (2020) reflected the moody guitar pop they purveyed in the 2010s and 2020s. The group returned from hiatuses in the '80s and '90s with renewed creativity on the electronic leanings of The Ideal Copy (1987) or the ferocious noise of Send (2003). This capacity for self-reinvention, and their willingness to stop recording when ideas aren't forthcoming, is crucial to Wire's longevity and continued relevance. Pink Flag (1977) found them twisting punk's simplicity and rawness to their own arty designs on Chairs Missing (1978) they added frosty atmospheres and more melodic songwriting, both of which they heightened on 154 (1979). Their first three albums alone attest to a startling evolution as the band repeatedly - and rapidly - reinvented themselves. Focused on experimentation and process, Wire's musical identity constantly changes. Emerging from the British punk explosion, Wire resisted easy categorization from the start, and would for decades to come.

Wire hang redux