WIRE

Wire's Pink Flag is often upheld as one of the most revolutionary and innovative albums of the punk era and I can safely say you'll hear no words of disagreement from me. Indeed, even ignoring influence, I think this is actually one of the most innovative albums ever. Twenty-one songs (twenty-three, including bonus tracks) fly by in about 40 minutes and several fail to even reach the minute-mark with their running time. Furthermore, true to the ethics of punk, the arrangements are almost ridiculously minimalist, with a single guitar rarely straying past a few chords, backed by a hollow, almost uninterested sounding rhythm section. Most of the time, it sounds like a recording session by a band with an extremely limited attention span. When they get bored of a song (which varies between 28 seconds and a mammoth four minutes) they simply stop playing it and start a new one. Of course, it is not a matter of boredom as such but they are simply completely ruthless in knowing when to cut things out. Whereas other bands may struggle to think of a middle-eight for their standard verse-chorus effort if Wire can't think of a middle-eight then Wire don't include one. It is a remarkably simple idea and, like I said, one that has barely been entertained before, never mind taken to this extreme. After sitting through, for example, Deep Purple straining to extend every song to five or six minutes you really wonder why someone didn't think of this sooner. It probably won't surprise you to learn that such a brazen rejection of pop music rules was not dreamt up by typical dim-witted punks but, in fact, originates straight outta art-school. We'll never know whether Wire would have released an album like this if punk hadn't "happened" (would they have been another Pink Floyd-style prog band?) but there is no doubting that this album is the logical extreme of the punk ethic. Not only is this a remarkably innovative and intelligent album it is also blessed by an amazing collection of melodies. When you concoct an idea for an album like this you might expect the actual tunes to be relegated behind the aesthetics but, thankfully, that could not be further from the truth. Of course an album as great and as revolutionary as this one has hardly been cast aside by fellow musicians and "Three Girl Rhumba" and "Lowdown" alone gave birth to Elastica and Fugazi respectively. Out of twenty-one songs I do not think a single one even approaches mediocre (presumably if it was they would not have included it anyway) and even if you don't like certain songs chances are it will only last for a minute or so. That said, the two "epics" on the album (I wish more albums' epics only lasted four minutes) are two of my least favourite tracks. The industrial grind of the title track ensures a less than memorable melody and, even with their extreme self-discipline, I still think "Strange" could have been half the length. Other than that couplet, and given the nature of the album, I don't think it wise to stray much beyond my favourite tracks with regards to description. The honour of being my favourite track from the album comes down to a toss-up between "Lowdown" and the absurdly melodic "Mannequin". I love the climatic aggression of the former but I think I probably just side with the pop-punk shenanigans of "Mannequin" which has a peerless melody and superb backing vocals, not to mention the final "la-la-la"'s. "Ex Lion Tamer" is also brilliantly melodic and I dig the unhinged rush of "Surgeon's Girl". Opener "Reuters" makes best use of the rumbling guitar and closer "12XU" is one of rock's most famous one-liners. As it stands I imagine people's favourites are probably pretty diverse - such is the unity of the album that I'd wager every song is liked by someone. If it is accurate to call 47 second tracks "songs" that is. This album is probably the best proof that punk was never fundamentally divorced from art and even if the songs themselves were nothing special it will always have a place in my heart for ensuring unnecessarily repetitive and overly long rock songs were no longer de rigueur. One can also spends hours querying how something can be so pretentious yet simple at the same time. Is it rock'n'roll masquerading as art? Art redefining rock'n'roll? Or simply a cosy co-existence? Why are there so many questions? Who has the answers? And why do we care?

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Email me at: jackfeeny@yahoo.co.uk