Ranked: The Albums of Wire
43 years after their first album, Wire’s new album shows they still have the goods
In the late seventies, amongst some of my university friends, Wire was the next big thing. Then they weren’t and they receded to the periphery of my musical landscape.
Although Wire emerged in the late-70s British punk explosion, musically they never seemed to me to embody the punk ethos. They might have been noisy, but musically they were not afraid to display a restless intellect. It made sense that they would tour with Roxy Music.
In 2020 Wire released a new album, Mind Hive. What caught my attention was a 4.5-star rating on AllMusic. A little research later I found that Wire never went away. This was their nineteenth album in forty-three years and three years since their last.
Mind Hive…is yet another flawless expression of chiming, compact, pulsing, metronomic, dawning/dusking heartpunk from the greatest art rock band of our era. (Rock & Roll Globe)
