From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V7 #269 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Wednesday, September 15 2004 Volume 07 : Number 269 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [idealcopy] chairs unsung ["Keith Astbury" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 22:16:59 +0100 From: "Keith Astbury" Subject: [idealcopy] chairs unsung susbcribers to cope's website are invited to review 'unsung' albums. someone's just done CM... Opinions vary wildly amongst both critics and fans as to which is Wire's greatest album. Perhaps such a diversity of opinion is inevitable when assessing a band who made a point of developing and mutating their sound with each successive release. Most American journos tend to plump for "Pink Flag", which is understandable - it's breathtaking combination of velocity, melody and, most crucially of all, brevity, influenced a whole slew of British and American post-punk bands from the Homosexuals to the Minutemen. However, since Seth Man has already done an excellent job of reviewing that one, I'll direct you straight to the Book of Seth for further reference rather than attempting to summarise it's charms in one short paragraph. Nonetheless, although each of their three Harvest albums, and some - though not all - of their post-reformation ones have much to recommend them, I'm going to throw in my lot with "Chairs Missing" as their finest hour. If anything, this is Wire's transitional album, the stepping stone between the arty punk scratchings of "Pink Flag" and the gloomy grandeur of "154", and it finds them in a fascinating state of flux which, although it produces extremely diverse results, somehow manages to hang together as a cohesive album without ever sounding disjointed. It begins with "Practise Makes Perfect", featuring a reggaefied two-chord staccato riff topped off by cryptic, paranois lyrics and an oddly foreboding one-note synthesizer flourish which evokes the atmosphere of an unusually vivid dream gradually mutating into a nightmare. It's followed by "French Film Blurred", in which a strikingly melodic Byrds-like chorus nestles alongside angular chord changes and lyrics which suggest a dreamlike combination of the sensational and the mundane. In fact, the entire album suggests a fascination with the subconscious mind and the music it might produce if left to its own devices, unintellectualised and unimpeded by the strictures of rationality. On "Another The Letter", Wire singlehandedly invent electroclash with a perversely chirpy dance beat topped off by lyrics describing the content of a letter that turns out to be a suicide note. "Marooned" is a mellow vignette about being lost at sea, which establishes a relaxed ambience which is then immediately shattered by "Sand In My Joints". The most obvious hangover from "Pink Flag" on the album apart from the closing "Too Late", it develops the combination of aggression and bittersweet melody into something feverishly intense and strikingly effective. A more cynical, opportunistic outfit than Wire might have capitalised on the direction of the previous album by releasing an entire LP in this vein, but fortunately, they were far too restless souls to settle for such a convenient lapse into formula. "Being Sucked In Again" is the most upfront example of what Simon Reynolds called the "strange clockwork geometry" which was shamelessly plagiarised to far lesser effect by Elastica in the mid-90s. "Heartbeat" (memorably covered, and completely re-invented, as a screaming industrial hardcore anthem by Big Black) is, in its original form, the album's most soothing and soporific moment. "Mercy" opens what would have been side 2 back in the vinyl era, and ups the ante on "Being Sucked In Again" by stretching itself out over five and a half breathtakingly cathartic minutes. "Outdoor Miner" is the album's obvious single, featuring an indelible Beatlesque chorus that shows just how big these guys might have been if they'd had a more conventional career plan (or perhaps a less indulgent record label). "I Am The Fly" "I Feel Mysterious Today" and "From The Nursery" are all all childlike vignettes which update the combination of whimsy and unsettling dementia pioneered by Syd Barrett for the punk era. Then there's a return to blissed-out psychedelic pop for "Used To", which sets the scene for the most climactic of all climactic moments on an album which has an almost embarrassing surfeit of them. If I had to pick one overall favourite, I reckon "Too Late " would get my vote as the finest song ever to emerge from british post-punk. Just about everything which made the years 1978-81 so vital in the history ofBritish underground music is contained here - - clanging, fuzzed-out guitars, rigid drumbeats which manage to be both metronimically accurate and viciously aggressive at the same time, a melody with enough hooks to rival the Buzzcocks or even the Undertones, droning, industrial keyboard patterns and a screaming finale that leaves the listener as exhausted, ravished and dirtied as one should feel after having great sex. Along with several other UK albums of this era (Swell Maps' "Jane From Occupied Europe", This Heat's debut, PiL's "Metal Box" and even The Soft Boys' "Underwater Moonlight") "Chairs Missing" is a rich and eclectic masterpiece which proves beyond all doubt that the expansiveness and desire for musical progression which characterised the late 60s and early 70s were NOT incompatible with punk's 45rpm amphetamine rush. On top of that, it still sounds marvellously contemporary even today. So if your post-punk collection is missing some chairs, get yer ass down ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V7 #269 *******************************