I tend to agree with this, sadly. Seemingly unlike most here I found Manscape and The First Letter joyful, engaged and experimental (and full of good solid tunes for those that like that sort of thing!) but this back to basics reunion seemed far too thin. I even find the short versions on the Redux LP don't justify their length. I was very glad when the band kept going though - better was to come.
After listening to Manscape and The First Letter, yesterday, (which, I never really gave them much of a chance when they came out) I came to the conclusion (you may disagree) that both were fine examples of writing and songs from either could easily be found on the other album. The difference then, is the production. Manscape has a full, Europop "Depeche Mode" type of 90s production, lots of synth textures, huge... and The First Letter is more skeletal and experimental feeling. The instruments have more room in the mix, there are interesting guitar sounds and vocal samples deep in the distance that give the record depth. It's just more interesting to listen to. I don't know what the particular production notes of these recordings would indicate (personnel changes) but from casual listening it seems they were just trying to see what works. Wire have so many different possible styles from which to choose from they can afford taking chances. Isn't this what makes them special? Me personally, I like the experimental "DOME/Duet Emmo" side that emulates from The First Letter.
Actually, while I also feel Send is the point at which the band started to believe in their own legacy, the first two Read and Burn EPs are exciting and vital as ****! I remember thinking that 01 was a nod to Pink Flag and 02—with its electronic sheen—a nod to Chairs Missing. It felt they had incorporated all their disparate sounds over the years into something new, and whole. I couldn’t wait to see what was coming next...! Then... ...the engine fell out. Send was just a repackage of 4 tracks from each EP, plus 4 tracks that sound like decent outtakes from those. They toured, but by the time they followed up, Bruce was out. And so was the tension that I think, for many of us, defined the band. But Read and Burn 02, and in particular the sci-fi grind of “Nice Street Above” and the title track, and the gorgeous “Trash/Treasure” which seemed to revisit their pure pop songwriting for the first time since the reunion, remains the climax of their art for me. It was the last time they did something that didn’t fall back entirely on previous success, and was the last time I felt that Wire wonder that anything could happen.
I saw Wire on the tour for "Send" and, having been a fan for many years, but having never seen the band live before, was simply blown away by the sheer relentless energy and power, almost brutality they showed on stage. Certainly one of the most overwhelming shows power and volume wise I have ever witnessed, next to maybe Ministry (when they were at the height of their power) or Melvins. Or Mogwai without quiet songs. I couldn't even have said if it was a musically good show, but I'll never forget the impact it had. As for the studio recording for that period - I usually prefer to listen to the "Scottish Play" live recording. "I don't understand" is excellent on that one!
This will be probably where I take my leave of this thread, because "Send" was the last Wire album I bought and, up until a few days when curiosity got the better of me, the last Wire album I'd heard. To be honest, I was not too enthused, at the time, by the idea of Wire reforming AGAIN, especially when I heard they'd gone back to being a guitar band and had 'gone all punky'. For a band that had always looked to the future and continually moved forwards, the idea of them as a bunch of shouty old men revisiting their youth did not appeal. It certainly didn't help when I read an interview with Colin Newman where he was going on about a rebirth in guitar music and was namechecking the fr*ggin' Libertines(!), the Strokes et al. So I held off buying "Send". I eventually did get the album, but I wasn't expecting too much of it, nonetheless despite that, I found it extremely disappointing. There are no tunes worthy of the name and not even many interesting sounds or textures (though there are some towards the end of the album). I found it featureless, monotonous and repetitive - and not in an interesting Dome-like way. Every so often, out of some kind of loyalty to Wire and the idea of Wire, I pull it out and try to give it another chance, but it never gets any better, I can never remember any of it beyond the first track. Something that I subsequently noticed happening with Wire - which often happens with respected bands that reform or even long running established acts/artists - is that a new album will get a lot of praise and good press then, when, the next album was released, that album will get a lot of praise and good press too but it will also be compared favourably with the previous album which will now be described as 'fairly disappointing in retrospect' or the like. And same with the next album. And the next album. So, what you end up with, in reality, is a succession of fairly disappointing albums. YMMV. Also, to be honest, I wasn't really interested in a Wire without Bruce Gilbert, especially when replaced by some long haired shoe-gazing whippersnapper who could pass for his grandson!
Worth pointing out here that the music on Send is full of electronic pulses and sampled guitars. In that sense it follows pretty naturally from First Letter.
Doesn't sound like any kind of natural progression to me, no matter how it was actually put together.
It's a very different set of songs using some of the same methodology. You could say that about Manscape/First Letter as well.
I have always been pretty disappointed/disinterested in the first two Read & Burn EPs and Send. It seemed like Wire were regressing, playing sort of dumbed down, back-to-basics, punkish music, and it just wasn't (and still isn't) interesting to me, especially from a band that had done such staggeringly creative and gripping work in the past. When Wire sort of reactivated, I was pretty excited. But then I quickly noticed that there seemed to be this focus in interviews and articles at the time on Pink Flag, with that album being sort of repositioned as Wire's most important, crucial work. Even the name and design of their website seemed to reflect this. As monumental and influential as Pink Flag undeniably is, I've always much preferred Chairs Missing and 154 (not to mention ABIAC), so this didn't quite sit right with me. When I saw them on the tour in 2000, I think their short set consisted of three or four Pink Flag songs, but two from Chairs and only one from 154. And most people in the crowd were shouting out for Pink Flag songs (and this one guy who looked an awful lot like Vyvian from The Young Ones kept calling out in a thick cockney accent for "Dot Dash.") My point here is that it seemed like the narrative was being rewritten slightly in a way that was putting Pink Flag on a higher pedestal than their other work, and I just couldn't get on board with that. Maybe if you conducted a poll you'd find Pink Flag actually is Wire's most popular album, so perhaps this focus made sense from a purely financial career-sustaining perspective, as cynical as that sounds. And the punkish sound of the first two Read & Burn releases seemed to forward this narrative. To me it seemed like laziness, or like they were bereft of interesting, new ideas, and they were trying (for the first time) to cash in on this punk rock legacy of theirs (albeit on their own terms by writing new, punkish sounding music rather than just touring and playing Pink Flag). (But what about their post punk legacy?!) Of course, Read & Burn was written/recorded/arranged in a way that was far, far removed from their punk origins, with the band recording short sounds and riffs and looping them and cutting and pasting them to construct new songs (so, still not really utilizing Robert Gotobed/Grey like a human drummer). However, I don't think you'd necessarily know this just by listening to most of it, which almost seems to go against the whole point of doing it that way. (The song "Read & Burn" might be an exception to that, though). Why spend all this time cutting and pasting simple two-chord punk music that could easily be played by just about anyone with hands and a guitar? Some of these songs don't even sound like Wire ("The Agfers of Kodack" comes to mind in that regard; "Nice Streets Above" almost sounds like Ministry). But what I've never been able to figure out is why so many people actually like this Read & Burn stuff. Trying to look at it as objectively as possible, most of it's not terrible or anything, but it's really not very exciting or interesting either, at least to these ears. I wasn't expecting another 154, but I was hoping for something a little more melodically engaging or sonically adventurous. At the time I just thought they'd lost the plot and were coasting on this punk rock legacy. And the whole thing seemed really conservative and safe to me. Rather than take sonic risks, push boundaries, and write engaging music, they just churned out this kind of stale, mostly one-dimensional punk. Years later, when I read in Neate's Read and Burn book that the main reason Wire were making music like this was to appease Bruce Gilbert, to keep him engaged and interested, I was like, geez, we had to endure a few years of this subpar buzzing punkish stuff because of him? Why didn't they just part ways back then? Because maybe then they'd have gotten back around to making good music a lot sooner, which they started doing again when Gilbert was out. So, yeah, I'm sure my opinion on this phase of their career will be fairly unpopular, but I'm just being honest!
I totally agree - you sum up in a few concise sentences what I blathered on about for multiple paragraphs!
Absolutely. I'd written them off by Read & Burn 2, but it was really nice and pleasantly surprising when, several years later, they started making good music again.
Colin is one of my favorite singers so I didn't like all of the yelling and growling. For some of these songs, their patented calm menace was being replaced with angry tantrums. Much of the music sounded like it was a return to square one (though as mentioned above, via a different recording process). Yes, by all means, bring the distortion back but no need to turn into Nine Inch Nails. I read live reviews that mentioned they were playing old songs again and they named their new label Pinkflag. This from Wire? The ultimate "don't look back" band? My opinion has actually softened considerably since the initial release(s). I appreciate this period more now, safely concluding it was only a phase. A mid-life crisis. The following quotes concerning the absence of "Trash/Treasure" on Send can be found in the booklet that was issued with Send Ultimate: "Bruce refused to have it on there because he thought it was too pop. He just wanted noise." Colin "There were things that went onto the album that I would have certainly replaced with "Trash/Treasure." Graham After reading this, I better understood and decided, as a fan, I had no issue whatsoever with Bruce leaving the group.
Seems kind of convenient to blame Bruce Gilbert for "Send" not being very good, you know, history being (re)written by the winners and all that? Haven't read this book that everybody else seems to have read though. Obviously the Colin Newman Band is likely to be pretty good, because he's an extremely talented guy - as long as he doesn't try making techno records - and Graham Lewis has other outlets for those interests that are no longer required in Wire.
Thank you for that. See you soon. I thought the "return to form" brigade would have come out in full force.
I don't think there's any question that Send has been their best received release popularly since the initial three. The reaction here is surprisingly negative (and hey, I wasn't exactly positive about it) but I wonder if it appealed primarily to a newer/younger generation of listeners than this forum tends to pull in.
Yikes, I was hoping the next few albums would be a lot better than "Send" and I might be persuaded to seek them out.
Ach, you're a bunch of bores☺Send is a blast. Total foot to the floor full tilt in your face incendiary sonic assault. It is still a total adrenaline rush to listen to. It is a one and done type thing; and they went on to develop a new Wire after Gilbert left but this is a great record. I was at the Glasgow Tramway show that they filmed A Scottish Play at and that was and still is one of the best concerts i have ever been to. It was like being hit by an exocet missile that night.
I lived Read & Burn 01-02 but hated the mastering. I eventually replaced them with 456 Redux on vinyl, though the harshness still makes my ears ring, because I find the songs invigorating even now.
The Redux vinyl version of Send is really good. Even more stripped down and furious. I suppose in some ways the Send/Read and Burn material can be viewed as a palette clearing exercise so they could get that out of the way, say "we can do furious antagonistic new wave punk using electronic samples; here it is, in yer face, we are brilliant at that too, but it is a creative cul de sac and for Wire to have a 3rd future we are moving on with Bruce or not."
In my case, it had the unintended consequence of ending any interest in the 3rd future. I must get a hold of this book, I didn't realize Bruce was such formidable character, any interview I've read or seen with Wire always seemed to be dominated by Colin and Graham.
I am not sure Bruce is/was such a formidable character although clearly a man with strong steadfast opinions. He is just not that interested in the more poppy conventional side of Wire nor touring as a working live band on a normal scale. When they reformed again, Colin and Graham (and Rob also back in the fold after Wir) obviously were in accordance that for Wire to have a viable long term future, they would need to tour more and not entirely focus on the more astringent abrasive left field part of their musical interests. This was not Bruce's idea of how he wanted to continue his professional life so they parted ways; not very amicably by all accounts. Send/Read and Burn was created out of an exchange of ideas and new working practices between Colin and Bruce, mostly through computer files sent back and forth with some input from Graham. This suited Bruce and allowed him to re-arrange and augment Colin's basic ideas to his satisfaction. However it did not lend itself to the idea of Wire as a working band again. When they decided to go out on the road this was a not something Bruce was interested in as an ongoing situation and it quickly became obvious that the other 3 thought different. I have to say if you have ceased interest in Wire because 'Send' did not appeal to you sonically, you are missing out on a lot, because from Object 47 onwards, you have a Wire that is a cross between the 80's pop experimentalists and the earlier 154's interesting angles. They rarely fall back on the fast furious somewhat one dimensional adrenaline buzz of Send. You should at least check out Change Becomes Us and that should hook you back in.
