Wire, Pink Flag

Okay, people like to say that this album is where "punk got smart" and--

HOLY SHIT! Where the hell is this record from? From the tense, building start, Wire drop you in the middle of an abstract, nameless warzone via "Reuters". "Our own correspondant" details the rising toll of civil conflict: "Prices have risen since the government fell / Casualties increase as the enemy shells". No security in the music, either. All angsty, awkward distorted angles, nothing even faintly resembling a verse or chorus, swelling up in the final seconds of death: "This is your correspondent, running out of tape / Gunfire's increasing, LOOTING! BURNING! RAAAAAPE!" Just when you think you've got a handle on it, the military rhythm of the departing troops gives you some breathing room and then--

"iwannabea" - Unh! Somehow in the space of five seconds Wire have kicked you into a surreal domestic pile-up of family, advertising, media, pornography: "leave a bad taste / That striped toothpaste can't remove". Still nothing resembling continuity, chorus, etc. Hear that repeated pounding of a single guitar chord that sets in about eleven seconds into the track, the only transcribable equivalent being the word "Dugga"? Get used to it. You're going to hear a lot of it. And love it. Twenty-seven seconds later, "Field Day For The Sundays" has covered all of the ground it needs to and ends, but only after a false finish.

Next up, "Three Girl Rhumba" captures cramming-in-the-dorm-at-three-am angst and mixes it with your sick sexual paranoia about that girl in your tutorial you can't talk to. Perversely, it also makes you want to wiggle your hips in a white-boy skank that would kill your social life if you had one if you did it anywhere other than your bedroom. Mad points for rhyming "go under" with "tear me asunder". "Three Girl Rhumba" is just long enough (1:23) for you to settle in, only to have your nerdy jive torn away by--

"Ex Lion Tamer" moves the battle of "Reuters" to the living room, where the passive masses munch "fish fingers all in a line", unable to escape the blue-glow of war coverage happening where? There? Here? We don't know. Does it matter? Oh yeah: it's also one of the most anthemic, beautiful and driving songs that ever grew out of punk's rotting carrion. Once inside, it will never leave your head.

...And that's just the first four songs, or seven minutes of "Pink Flag". Over twenty three tracks and (barely) forty minutes (less if you're dealing with the version without the equally essential bonues tracks), Wire do EVERYTHING. Anti-pop posing that outdoes Talking Heads, hardcore vitriol that inspired Ian MacKaye to start Minor Threat, and a whole buncha stuff that no one else could handle or understand, so Wire had to grab the ball and run with it themselves, but that's another story... This puppy gives a nod to, then suckerpunches and proceeds to dismember with surgical precision every punk rock convention that had settled by 1977, then hangs them up in an art-school bricolage. Buyitfuckinnow!

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