Wire

This is Wire regrouped and re-imagined as dream-meets-nightmare synth merchants. This isn't dissimilar to guitar-meets-computer "Everything's Gone Green"-era New Order, but Wire put a more sophisticated, rigorous spin on it. The relentless alt radio hit "Ahead" lives up to its name, while "Ambitious" is what 2001's HAL would sound like in a business suit.

When head-banger scholars look back in nostalgia at Wire, they regard this class-of-'77
English punk band as the originator of the abrasive sixty-second song. But Wire was more
than the progenitor of the Minutemen. The band merged punk anxiety with art-rock
aspiration and Euro-disco precision to arrive at a tuneful, often danceable new noise. On
its first studio LP of the Eighties, The Ideal Copy, Wire doesn't offer a perfect imit... More >

The Wire of punk myth abraded like the smell of gunpowder, f*cking in the sand, a scouring pad. This is more like digital sound turned up too loud, a cold shower, a dash of after-shave: chronic alienation converted into quality entertainment. Except on a terrible track that outdoes slow Roxy Music, it's pretty bracing in both rock and disco modes. It's also nothing more. (Grade - B-)