Wire
Wire
PINK FLAG
5/10
Despite its punk inception, Wire has done a good deal of trade in thought-provoking, future-pop for nearly four decades. The group’s fourteenth studio album, in effect, tries to return the band to that future. So don’t come looking for the minimalist power-drill aesthetics of some of Wire’s more splenetic (or exciting) moments. Rather, this is the work of four gentlemen who also know how to turn on the aural urbanity, even if it turns off the sonic delight that listeners have come to expect from the London group. But “In Manchester” and “Joust & Jostle” gallop along with all the jittery exhilaration of a young band just let loose in a studio for the first time. Though, when Colin Newman intones so cerebrally but matter-of-factly on “Sleep-Walking,” “We’re at a tipping point / The arguments may lead / To less cohesion,” listeners might agree with the frontman more than he bargained for. KEN SCRUDATO
