Repackaged/Depackaged?: The Latest Reissues of Wire's Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154

reviewed by dave heaton

The reissuing/repackaging game is a business game more than an artistic one, especially if the albums in question are already in print. Pink Flag's new CDs of the first three Wire albums claim an artistic purpose, at least, by stressing that the albums have been taken back to their original state, with bonus tracks removed. I admire this in theory – while I understand the pleasures of bonus tracks, when the only available version is the one with the extra tracks, that version becomes, de facto, the "original version" in new listeners' minds, superseding the original. And superfluous extra tracks become a part of the album as far as most listeners are concerned.

That said, these new Wire CDs only go partway there; there's still new liner notes, unnecessary essays proclaiming the band's greatness. And even the original cover art has an extra "Original Masters" line of text on the left-hand side. If you're going to do it, why not do it? In any case, whatever the reasons, economic or artistic (and surely, as always, they're nearly all economic) of putting these albums out again, it at least gives us another obvious reason to focus on them again, to once again reaffirm their status as intriguing, exciting works of music.

1977's Pink Flag is the most 'traditional' of the three, meaning that it retains much of the energy and forward motion of 'rock', of 'punk' even, while also running it through with a strange sort of darkness and maintaining a particularly stark, minimalist demeanor. By turns apocalyptic (opening track "Reuters") and philosophical/existential ("think of a number / divide it by two / something is nothing / nothing is nothing"), Pink Flag is driven by moods and ideas, while also maintaining the kind of "catchiness" that your typical rock fans would desire; there's a reason this is the album that R.E.M. covered ("Strange") and Elastica borrowed from. Even given the punk rebelliousness of a song like "Mr Suit", the album thrives on ambiguity and complexity. Not to mention an overall sense of impending doom – "I love you girl / I love you / until they split the atom," one song notes.

Two years later, by 1979's 154, they'd have taken the absurdist, mysterious, and minimalist aspects of their music and pushed them far, creating what will still likely strike new listeners as a new sound, their own musical universe. The songs here read like deliberately confusing puzzles. Witness opening track "I Should Have Known Better"'s proclamation, "I've tears in my eyes / am I laughing or crying / I suggest I'm not lying." The album starts with an eerie mood and almost sedate vocals, both of which grow impassioned and electric as the album proceeds, but without the expected rock moments of build-and-release. It's a spooky, intense album dominated by themes of struggle, internal and domestic. It feels like an anguished trip into a purgatory of confusion, and continually suggests that such a purgatory is not unknown but known: life.

Almost an exact approximation of the middle point between the musical styles of these albums is 1978's Chairs Missing, for me the album that's been most rewarding in the long haul. The lyrics are less society-based than on Pink Flag, but don't take the personal tone of 154 either. They're mysterious, beguiling, enticing; the presence of Borges, Poe and Hitchock hanging in the air. And the music, this time quite synthesizer-driven, is the same – swirling and dreamy, but still with the compact punch of rock. The guitars still bang out big chords, and there are a few melodic hooks, like on the classic "Outdoor Miner," a song rich enough that the label Words on Music recently put together a compilation featuring only covers of that one song. But everything's open-ended, with none of the easy answers most pop-rock music attempts to present. Each song feels in part like a murder mystery, but of course one with no resolution. There's references to shipwrecks, to societal breakdown, and the lyrics often break down into fragments as a corollary. "I Feel Mysterious" is the song title most likely to be used as a descriptor, of Chairs Missing and of Wire's music in general.

{www.pinkflag.com}