Pitchfork

n Marnie Christenson & Kevin Keenan report:
The mightiest of art punk pioneers, Wire, are releasing their first full-length album in 13 years. Entitled Send, the record will be released on Wire's own Pink Flag Records (named after their 1977 debut) on April 28th. The recording contains four brand new tracks and six songs off of their recent EPs, Read & Burn 01 and Read & Burn 02. New songs include "Mr Marx's Table", "Being Watched", "You Can't Leave Now" and "Half Eaten", and the album version of "Nice Streets Above" is an original full-length version which appeared in edited form on Read & Burn 02. Tracklist:

n 01 In the Art of Stopping [from Read & Burn 01]
02 Mr Marx's Table
03 Being Watched
04 Comet [from Read & Burn 01]
05 The Agfers of Kodack [from Read & Burn 01]
06 Nice Streets Above [previously unreleased LP version]
07 Spent [from Read & Burn 02]
08 Read & Burn [from Read & Burn 02]
09 You Can't Leave Now
10 Half Eaten
11 99.9 [from Read & Burn 02]

n Tracks that didn't make the cut but may, in several years, appear as bonus tracks on a reissue (or minutes from now on a CDR):

n 12 I Don't Understand [from Read & Burn 01]
13 Germ Ship [from Read & Burn 01]
14 1st Fast [from Read & Burn 01]
15 Trash/Treasure [from Read & Burn 02]
16 Raft Ants [from Read & Burn 02]

n Wire grew out of the London punk scene in the mid-70s, but quickly established themselves as a difficult band to pin-down musically. More tuneful, certainly, and more talented, arguably, than some of theirs punk peers at the time, they thrived on experimentation and became immediate innovators. The band met at Watford Art College in 1976 when guitarists Colin Newman, George Gill and Bruce Gilbert formed Overload. The trio hooked up with bassist Graham Lewis and drummer Robert Grey soon thereafter, and the original Wire lineup was born.

n After shedding Gill, the band began gigging around London in 1977, and it was during an important show at The Roxy that Wire met EMI's Mike Thorne, who would produce the band's groundbreaking debut LP, Pink Flag. By the end of the decade, the band had released two other seminal punk (?) rock (?) albums: 1978's Chairs Missing was a more textural and complex album than their debut, with Thorne's synths adding depth to the band's sound; and, 1979's 154, which was named for the number of live shows the band had played to that point, saw Lewis taking over some of the vocal duties and the group offering a more polished affair as they laid the framework for the bridge from punk to post-punk.

n Early in 1980, the group took an extended break for the first time as their relationship with their label fell apart, and their onstage behavior became increasingly challenging for fans. You might remember "Eardrum Buzz" from this period as a staple on MTV's 120 Minutes (like, if you're super old, which we are totally not). You don't want to know what happened next, but suffice to say, this is the band's second reformation and, despite the countless albums they issued throughout the neon decade, the Read & Burn EPs are their only releases of any real import since the 70s.

n Posteverything.com is taking pre-orders for Send for £10, which, according to the official, well-worn Pitchfork TI-83 calculator, should run us Yanks about $15.75. As a bonus, however, orders will ship with a limited edition CD of mixes from live mutitrack recordings made during Wire's performance at The Metro in Chicago in September of 2002. The mixes will not be sold alone, nor will they be available from any retail sources other than Posteverything. How's that for a clincher? Posteverything says that you may expect your order in your mailbox no earlier than April 26th. That takes care of that little internet work-around, eh? As you would expect, a vinyl version is also available.

n It gets better: Wire will be touring the UK in April and are planning to offer up a few more U.S. dates in June. If you're lucky enough to live in and around London, the Barbican show is expected to be something to behold. In a production entitled "flag:burning", Wire will perform Pink Flag for the first time in its entirety with a set designed by contemporary visual artists Jake & Dinos Chapman. Then (from what we can discern from an utterly incomprehensible press release), they will perform Send against a stage designed and directed by Es Devlin. Confirmed dates thus far:

n 03-22 Nantes, FR - I.D.E.A.L. Festival
04-26 London, UK - The Barbican
06-21 Los Angeles, CA - All Tomorrow's Parties (venue TBA)

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