Posts Tagged ‘Graham Lewis’

WIRE – ” Live Rockpalast ” February 1979

Posted: April 18, 2021 in MUSIC
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Filmed in February 1979, this performance shot for long-running German live music series “Rockpalast” — finds Wire still climbing, almost changing by the second. Two years earlier they were banging out amazing, minute-long punk rippers and here they’ve incorporated gloomy soundscapes, electronics and pure pop into their ever-morphing repertoire. Many of the songs that would appear on the band’s third album, “154” (released in October 1979), are here, including such greats as “The 15th,” “A Single KO,” and “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W,” alongside “older” songs like “Pink Flag,” “Practice Makes Perfect,” and “Another the Letter.” The band would go on hiatus a year later.

John Peel was a strong supporter of Wire, particularly during the band’s initial run of three ground breaking LPs on Harvest between 1977 and 1979, which coincided with their first three sessions for his show. The third session, featuring a single abstract piece called ‘Crazy About Love’, stood out as a landmark in Wire’s rapid evolution away from their early punk sound, as Colin Newman later recalled: “Instead of the usual four songs of three minutes, we did a 12-minute song, which was the antithesis of everything the Peel show was about: short, punky, unpretentious. A rumour reached us that he wasn’t pleased, but fair play to him, he played it – twice.

Widely viewed as one of the leading bands of the post-punk era, Wire were a major influence on many outfits played by Peel in later years.

This is Wire at their tense peak and the polite TV audience makes it all the more wonderfully strange.

Wire: Colin Newman (vocals, guitar), Graham Lewis (bass, vocals) Bruce Gilbert (guitar) Robert Gotobed (drums)

Setlist: 00:41 Another The Letter 01:53 The 15th 04:36 Practice Makes Perfect 07:26 Two People In A Room 09:20 I Feel Mysterious Today 11:20 Being Sucked In Again 13:54 Once Is Enough 16:42 Blessed State 19:41 A Question of Degree 22:27 Single KO 24:54 Mercy 30:40 40 Versions 34:45 Former Airline 35:52 A Touching Display 42:07 French Film Blurred 44:41 Men 2nd 46:15 Map Ref. 41°N 93°W 50:06 Heartbeat 54:39 Pink Flag 57:42 “THANK YOU”

WIRE – ” 10-20 “

Posted: June 20, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Wire have never been ones for looking back. When they reformed in the ’80s they got a Wire cover band, Ex Lion Tamers, to open for them on tour so they wouldn’t have to play songs from their first three albums. When they do revist older material, they are prone to transforming it, like on 1989’s IBTABA. Forty-plus years into their existence they’re still doing it. Having already released a new studio album this year, they’re back with new-album “10:20″ that is based on this premise:
When Wire plays live there are, in the main, three classes of piece: new songs, old songs and ‘new old’ songs. The latter often involves taking something that existed on a previous release and re-working it, very often evolving a stage highlight from it. There also pieces that have never seen a major release but for some reason never fitted on an album.

The reworked songs on 10:20 represent Wire from two different eras — one relating to Red Barked Tree and recorded in 2010, and another relating to Mind Hive and released in 2020. The album works both as terrific new record and one that will be especially of interest to fans. This was originally intended as a Record Store Day 2020 exclusive but when COVID-19 messed everything up, they smartly decided to give it a proper release.

The first four songs, from 2010, are from when Margaret Fielder (of Laika) was a member of the group. “Boiling Boy,” originally on 1988’s A Bell is a Cup Until it is Struck, becomes lean and sinewy, slithering like a moray eel along to Graham Lewis’ bassline and Robert Grey’s precision drumming. “German Shepherds,” a b-side from the same era that was already reworked for IBTABA, now becomes a second cousin twice removed to 154’s “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W.” “He Knows,” a song that was a late-’00s live staple that never made it to an album, is Wire in creepy mode; and “Underwater Experiences” is full-on punk, that actually dates from their ’70s era, powered by an ambulance siren guitar riff.

The 2020 side features the Wire line-up that’s been constant for the last 10 years (Newman, Lewis, Grey and former It Hugs Back frontman Matthew Simms). “Over Theirs,” originally on 1986’s great The Ideal Copy, becomes a piledriver; “The Art of Persistence,” which could be the title of Wire’s biography, is another great “lost” song; and “Small Black Reptile” saves a great song from 1990’s uninspired Manscape, giving it a much more immediate arrangement (two two versions might as well be totally different songs.

Despite the two sides being made a decade apart, “10:20″ holds together remarkably well and is another fine entry in one of the most consistent discographies of the last 43 years.

WIRE – ” Mind Hive “

Posted: January 18, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The post-punk legends Wire announced a new album, “Mind Hive”, and shared its first single, “Cactused.” They also announced some tour dates. Mind Hive is due out January 24th, 2020 via the band’s own pinkflag label.

Mind Hive is the band’s seventeenth studio album and the follow-up to 2017’s Silver/Lead. Wire’s line-up consists of founding members Colin Newman (vocals/guitar), Robert Grey (drums), and Graham Lewis (bass guitar, vocals), as well as guitarist Matthew Simms, who has been with the band since 2010.

Wire exhibit little inclination to look back – rather they remain resolutely focused on producing music which is smart, vital and defiantly modern.

“Mind Hive” is the group’s first newly recorded material since 2017’s “Silver/Lead”. that album garnered rave reviews and career best sales. yet, if “Silver/Lead” set the bar pretty high, “Mind Hive” seems to have no problem vaulting over it. be like them is a super-angular composition, utilizing a recently rediscovered Wire lyric from 1977. Colin Newman and Matthew Simms’ guitars constantly mesh and diverge, whilst the rhythm section ensures the song prowls forward with an unstoppable menace. cactused is the first of Mind Hive’s pop moments. the vocal is wide eyed and wired, with effects-heavy guitar work creating a bright web of noise, with the song’s stop/start moments providing a series of precise energy bursts. primed and ready rides out on a tightly pulsing synth sequence punctuated by icy slivers of guitar.

This is Wire at their most compressed yet propulsive. “Off the Beach” is another prime pop song. with its breezy, optimistic melody, and blend of electric and acoustic guitars, the song initially sees the group seemingly celebrating the joys of everyday life but things are destined to turn a shade stranger. unrepentant explores the kind of bucolic soundscape early Floyd would have been proud to call their own. boasting one of the album’s finest texts, the song radiates out into a shimmering sonic heat haze. “Shadows” pulls the classic Wire trick of placing a dark and cruel lyric in a musical setting of tender beauty. never has the recounting of atrocity been so seductively pitched. “Oklahoma” is the muscular and dramatic joker in the pack. Lewis’ dark vocal swims through a rich compound of guitar textures and synth tones, building into a masterclass of tension and release. hung is the album’s centrepiece. this 8-minute excursion matches a brief but evocative lyric with a dense, mesmeric guitar grind. Simms and Newman’s keyboards add a plaintive note, as the song moves through a series of sections, each with its own distinct atmosphere. humming is a beatless autumnal drift fashioned from delicate keyboard textures and rich soaring guitar tones. Newman delivers a state of the world lyric with a touching sense of innocence, whilst the piece ends with Lewis’ husky baritone listing locations and their difficult associations. an elegiac end to a supremely confident album. Mind Hive arrives at a time when wire are being cited as an influence by yet another generation of bands. a career spanning feature documentary called people in a film is due for release late 2020. quite how a group that has been operating for such a long period is still able to produce such exciting and essential work is difficult to understand. and yet here we are

“MIND HIVE” – release date 24.01.20

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WIRE – ” Silver Lead “

Posted: December 29, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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They may not take the leaps into new territories they once did, but instead explore the detail in the terrain they themselves uncovered. Thus, repetitive rhythms nestle alongside walls of fuzz. However, this is a slower, more melancholy Wire, one that finds them at their most melodic and enigmatic. As ever, it requires more than a thesaurus to unravel lyrics such as “Skippering a skiff, in the typhoon season” and “Have you got a shed of ions?” But Diamond Cups and A Short Elevated Period are some of the strongest tunes they’ve ever done. The faster-paced latter song sees – as an old compilation was once titled – Wire play pop, but in a manner that pushes at the form, with a chorus only arriving at the end. Wire continue to thrive on their own terms.

Opening with the plangent “Playing Harp For The Fishes”—where Graham Lewis’ rich baritone intones over Colin Newman and Matt Simms FX-drenched waves of guitar—this is an album as intense as it is playful. Robert Grey’s spartan but immaculately nuanced drum patterns lift the arrangements throughout. And, whilst Wire are still the go-to band for angular psychedelics (“An Alibi”) and oblique but melodic post punk (“Short Elevated Period”), Silver/Lead sees them experimenting with a more glam inflected template.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfiurED57iw

“Forever & A Day” suggests the elegant swing and compressed drama of early Roxy Music, and the buzzing and glinting “Diamonds in Cups” has a flavour of T-Rex at their most groovesome. With Silver/Lead, the group prove once again that late-period Wire can easily lay claim to being best-period Wire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTkxQMP_QCw

WIRE – ” Pink Flag ” Classic Albums Released November 1977

Posted: November 1, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Pink Flag was “perhaps the most original debut album to come out of the first wave of British punk” and also “recognizable, yet simultaneously quite unlike anything that preceded it. Pink Flag‘s enduring influence pops up in Hardcore Post Punk Alternative Rock and even Britpop, and it still remains a fresh, invigorating listen today: a fascinating, highly inventive rethinking of punk rock. The albums  a brilliant 21-song suite.  It’s a brief, intense explosions of attitude and energy, the band coming up with a collection of unforgettable tunes

Who says you don’t learn anything from art school?,  Tell that to Colin Newman and see how long it takes you to get a fist to the face or a mouthful to the ear. As singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the band Wire, the art-school graduate opted for the six-string over his easel, but he didn’t stop painting.  The wildly subversive “Pink Flag” album suggests, his art was in taking a minimalist approach to punk rock and hitting the genre with broader strokes. Like his contemporaries, there’s volume to his sound and angst to his songs, but it’s splattered across every facet to the music in wildly unpredictable ways. That’s why you can leap from the crunchy pop of “Ex Lion Tamer” toward the plodding psychedelia of “Strange” and over to the doo wop bliss of “Mannequin”. Basically, you never get the sense that they’re leaning on any one thing in particular, and that’s one of the many distinctions of post-punk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNVdziest58

Wire are
Bruce Gilbert – guitar, sleeve concept
Robert Gotobed – drums
Graham Lewis – bass guitar, sleeve concept
Colin Newman – vocals, guitar on “Lowdown” and “Strange”