Self-titling an album late in a band's career is usually a sign of (sometimes desperate) reinvention, a way of setting the counter back to zero. But Wire, whose 14th album is called - you guessed it - Wire, has never had much use for watching the clock. The London quartet, which still features three of the members who began it nearly 40 years ago, is famously disinclined to revisit its past on stage. This article is from wwwphilly.comAt one point, Wire hired a tribute band as an opening act to relieve them of the tiresome burden of taking requests from their old albums. When Colin Newman sang about "Selling on eBay all that is mine" at Union Transfer on Friday night, he sounded as if he were looking forward to decluttering.
The band's set wasn't monolithically focused on the present, but it was close: Over an hour and 40 minutes, they played one song apiece from their classic first three albums, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154, and two from 1988's A Bell Is a Cup. Apart from that, nothing hailed from further back than 2008. So much for nostalgia. Fans of the new material, at least, were in luck; every one of Wire's 11 songs made the set list.
Although Wire came up alongside the Sex Pistols et al., their music has always been characterized by conceptual purity; they were post-punk before there was any punk to be post. Their stage show is rigorous almost to a fault; the only words uttered were Newman's final "Thank you" to the crowd. But Wire gains strength from the no-frills approach. The new songs - the first to feature guitarist Matt Simms, who replaced founding member Bruce Gilbert as a touring member in 2010, in a primary creative role - managed to be sparse and overwhelming simultaneously, like a skyscraper made of filament. Newman's lilting, leisurely vocals on "In Manchester" belied the breakneck rhythm pounded out by bassist Graham Lewis and drummer Robert Grey behind him.
The downside to the band's present-tense approach was that the songs tended to blur, making the set less a narrative than a dense object. But considering that Wire named an album Object 47, that's not a dirty word in their cosmos. They're like the musical equivalent of one of Richard Serra's sculptures, so grand and implacable that just passing through leaves you changed.
The band's set wasn't monolithically focused on the present, but it was close: Over an hour and 40 minutes, they played one song apiece from their classic first three albums, Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154, and two from 1988's A Bell Is a Cup. Apart from that, nothing hailed from further back than 2008. So much for nostalgia. Fans of the new material, at least, were in luck; every one of Wire's 11 songs made the set list.
Although Wire came up alongside the Sex Pistols et al., their music has always been characterized by conceptual purity; they were post-punk before there was any punk to be post. Their stage show is rigorous almost to a fault; the only words uttered were Newman's final "Thank you" to the crowd. But Wire gains strength from the no-frills approach. The new songs - the first to feature guitarist Matt Simms, who replaced founding member Bruce Gilbert as a touring member in 2010, in a primary creative role - managed to be sparse and overwhelming simultaneously, like a skyscraper made of filament. Newman's lilting, leisurely vocals on "In Manchester" belied the breakneck rhythm pounded out by bassist Graham Lewis and drummer Robert Grey behind him.
The downside to the band's present-tense approach was that the songs tended to blur, making the set less a narrative than a dense object. But considering that Wire named an album Object 47, that's not a dirty word in their cosmos. They're like the musical equivalent of one of Richard Serra's sculptures, so grand and implacable that just passing through leaves you changed.