Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Punk? November 3, 2008
This is a really great album forget the clash , buzzcocks and pistols
wire is solid and the dirty guitars are brilliant
Simple... and experimental November 2, 2008
Wire will always dwell in a strange place. Sure, they're punk rock with their short, fast, simple songs. But at the same time Wire, from day one, were highly experimental despite their amatuerish ability. I don't think this stems from their art school background either, though this has been cited before. Many, many of the first wave of punk bands were art school kids. What made Wire different?
Dynamics? A philosophy?
I don't know. I love this album. It's almost like Wire wrote haiku. They were once quoted as saying something like 'we write short songs because when the lyrics were done so was the song...' Their basic musicianship (at the start) coupled with this minimalist attitude toward song structure creates a limiting thing, but in that restrictive enviornment a person ca really open up a lot of possibilities.
And these songs do that.
From the garage of "Three Girl Rhumba" to the smarmy, haunting "Mannequin"... this album is perfect.
Art Punk September 5, 2008
The Sex Pistols came right from 60's and 70's avant-garde confrontational theatre (not that Sid Vicious would understand any of that). Wire represents a co-opting of agi-punk with semi-abstract minimalist lyrics combined with great hooks and maximum overdrive distortion creating at times this enormous wall of pulsating sound. The songs are short aka Minuteman, JFA etc short -- really an album that defined an anti-thesis to progressive rocks worst traits, the endless gratuitous noodling. Many bands would take this formula and run with it. Wire's next albums would further reveal their underlying art school inspiration, abandoning the visceral sound of this album for a cooler, more "studio" sound, which in itself would be just as influential as this essential album.
 Why is this in the spotlight of Wire's catalogue? August 6, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
So this may be the album that initiated the band's success; it may be unique (in face value); it may have interesting art and a unique description of the band, but that's just about it.
Most of the songs go from under a minute to under 3, which is good because most just aren't interesting enough to go on longer. The lyrics are not thoughtful, just dull punk-ish nonsense you would expect from any other band. For a group of people who had at the time little experience with instruments the music is good, but even still not wonderful or unique in any way.
This album gives a few moments of 'huh, that's neat', but offers little else. The band's music really doesn't get interesting until 'Chairs Missing'; the first Wire song I ever heard was 'I am the fly', which gave me big expectations for the rest of their earliest work, but to be honest if I had first heard anything from this album I probably wouldn't have bothered to hear more (except maybe for the tracks 'Reuters' or 'Pink Flag').
I don't mean to be a prick, but it seems the biggest fans of this album are the people who hate everything the band, along with all solo projects, did after the year 1980, and that's a stretch. This album separates the punk fans from actual Wire fans.
I do listen to selections from this album occasionally, but I'd choose anything else from their catalogue over this. I think the best thing that came from this album would be the 'Twelve Times You' experimental record they made just a few years ago. And why 'Dot Dash', a really catchy, well-composed song, doesn't appear on the album is a real shame (though it is on earlier remasters, which are better worth getting).
Ten of the Most Dangerous Albums Ever Made (Entry #1) February 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Every decade sees thousands of albums released, each barely making its mark in the world. But there are those albums that are so revolutionary, filled with an urgency and a potency to shatter our preconceived notions of music, that they deserve attention. Dangerous is not Judas Priest, NWA, Slayer, or any rap album from the last fifteen years. Those artists and albums were simply selling an image. In this sense, dangerous refers to that music which punctured and tore the musical zeitgeist. And so begins our list, beginning with entry number one:
Pink Flag - Wire
1977 saw the birth of punk, and with it the death of standard rock and roll as it had been known up until that year. Seminal bands emerged and used punk as a method of shattering all the fat and excess from rock and roll, a purification of an over-sexed and commercialized sound. Thus, punk presented rock and roll in its simplest form: three chords, verse-chorus-verse.
But an English quartet would quickly and radically change punk in 1977. The band? Wire.
The songs contained within their debut album, Pink Flag, stripped punk down to its core essential. If a verse were not needed, Wire would discard it. If that additional chord did not need to be strummed, Wire would not strum it. If a song only need be twenty eight seconds long, Wire would only play the song for twenty eight seconds. Most songs clock in at under two minutes, filled with an urgency that not even the newest punk band could match. This is the sound of punk's bare bones.
With this album, Wire grabbed punk by the throat and held it at the edge of the musical precipice, threatening to destroy punk while showing all that it was and could ever be.
(nine more entries to follow)
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