Wire were always sonic alchemists, turning rock’s basic materials into art-pop with distinctive properties. The band’s mercurial songcraft has transformed the resonance of guitar strings and the knock of wood against mylar into a million different textures since their 1977 debut.
Forty years later, Silver/Lead shows Wire emerging from the lab on the front foot, turning out the kind of material that the dream-pop set can only dream about. From the delightfully retro sleeve to the cleverer-than-a-chemist lyrics, Wire continue to hold their ground. Over their four decades as a combo, they haven’t blown with the trends of the times, nor have they been stopped by line-up changes, time apart and a near-fatal experiment with drum machines. The new album continues the pattern by drawing on the strands of psychedelia that were hinted at on last year’s Nocturnal Koreans mini-album and infusing them with a sense of groove.
If you start at the beginning, the album kicks off with “Playing Hard for the Fishes.” Bassist Graham Lewis takes vocal duties, stepping through a surreal poem while guitars swarm around him. “It’s hard to pretend,” he declaims, and that must be true given Wire’s consistent authenticity.
Jumping ahead, “Diamonds in Cups” was the obvious choice for a single release. It has a summer haze about it, as well as a rhythm that lifts it into the upper tiers of Wire’s pantheon. XTC, a band with which singer Colin Newman shares regional roots, also moved into a trippier place as they matured, and there is the warmth of a Salisbury Plain midsummer in the production of this track. Hippies Wire certainly are not, but they can expand minds even when they are moving feet.
On “This Time,” Lewis takes the microphone to tell us, “Some folks believe in magic.” There is strong evidence for that outlook, based on the quality of the material assembled here: from the propulsion of “Short Elevated Period” to the airiness of “Sleep on the Wing,” Wire are at their grooviest in years.
The elements of A-Z, Newman’s first solo album, took shape at the same time as Wire’s 154. Properly regarded as the pinnacle of Wire’s first period, 154 was supposed to launch the band into the stratosphere; instead, after Bruce Gilbert panicked at the idea of commercial success, they adjourned sine die and let the moment pass them by. While Lewis and Gilbert retired to Blackwing Studios to record loops and drones, Newman was able to develop the material that was left behind into a formidable album of alternative pop. Although “Alone” became the best-known track from A-Z, after it was used in the soundtrack for Silence of the Lambs, the album is also notable for the original version of “Not Me,” which was covered on the first This Mortal Coil album. It also features “&Jury,” the kind of track that would keep teenaged Canadian kids awake all night listening to Brave New Waves.
For his second solo album, Newman veered into more conceptual territory, drawing upon his prog rock roots. Provisionally entitled the singing fish eschewed distinctive song titles in favour of a series of consecutively numbered “fish” tracks. Recorded entirely by Newman as instrumentals, albeit with some engineering help, PETSF owes something to Brian Eno’s ambient offerings, and the result was ostensibly described by 4AD’s Ivo Watts-Russell as an album waiting for the technology to catch up with it. The additional tracks on the CD release don’t add much to the canon but will suit completists; particularly those who have been hunting for “Here Come the Fleeing Rabbits.”
The third solo release from Newman, Not To, returned to more traditional terrain. “Remove for Improvement” is one of those tracks that can’t be called “lost” because it never went away but always deserved a wider airing. There are also reworkings of songs developed with Lewis or Gilbert, including “We Meet Under Tables.” Not To is half-way to being a Wire album, and it features not only the crisp drumming of Robert Grey throughout but also a guest appearance by Gilbert.
Wire‘s residency in Islington last year, as headliners for the 
Fryer’s work attracted the attention of Trent Reznor, who picked him out for production work on Pretty Hate Machine, the album that launched Nine Inch Nails. Other artists followed, from Vancouver’s Moev (who spawned the Nettwerk label, home to Skinny Puppy and Sarah McLachlan) to Sweden’s Ashbury Heights, looking for a touch of the studio magic that had made Fryer’s previous work so successful.
Germany has become a second home for many alternative artists, such as Psyche. What is it that makes the German soil better for growing artists outside of the American-influenced mainstream?
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Two albums have just been released under Lewis’ own name by Editions Mego, but that doesn’t make them any more straight-forward. All Under starts with a film score and installation piece of the same title: the former seemingly a series of intercepted radio signals, processed into a sequence of overlapping tonal waves; the latter a strikingly delicate and haunting drone set against more visceral electronics. Lewis acts as narrator on “The Eel Wheeled,” a short story somewhere between Kafka and Conrad, set in the dystopia that is the Homeland. “No Show Godot” is a slow-burning, restrained conclusion. With the most sparing manipulation of electrical current, Lewis has taken large strides along the experimental path that he first explored in the early 1980s, and All Under is an exemplary transmission from his Uppsala base.
The companion album, All Over, serves up a dozen tracks that walk on the knife-edge between pop and experimentalism. “Straight into the Corner” could easily fit into the Wire/Wir canon, with an easy-going sensibility, but it is a singular example – other tracks might appropriate familiar conventions, but only so that they can be deconstructed and repurposed. This is unmistakably a Lewis album, with his signature wordplay and playful subversion. The stand-out track, “We’ve Lost Your Mind,” is the closest thing to a single, but in a fairer world “Passport to International Travel” would be all over the radio. Take that, white van man.