Artist: Wire
Record: 154
Label: Harvest
Year of Release: 1979
Sounds Like: Post Punk, Art Punk, Avant Pop
Country: England
British punk/new wave band ''Wire'' is an act active since 1976 and a big referent when it comes to underground music in England. Led by Collin Newman (vocals and guitar) Graham Lewis (vocals and bass) having released a couple of albums that are enlisted among the expression of punk as a vehicle for modern ideas and artistic visions and not just as a manner of protest.
Their sound is often linked to Punk in its rawest form, though most of fans, followers, critics and so on, consider that Wire is closer to the actual Post Punk transition , providing their sound with synthetic atmospheres, avant garde experimentation and a clear transgression towards something more pompous, majestic and produced in many levels. Some even dare to think that Wire's sound may be the missing link between Punk and Progressive rock, crazy as it sounds. 154 is their third record where they started to navigate in the seas of modern 80s noise and electronic diversion.
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Does it work?
Regina Says: I must say that Wire's 154 is a criminally overlooked record. This thing is pure damn fusion and something that should have been more studied and checked out over the years. I don't know how it hasn't happened. It truly is Pink Floyd going punkish or The Clash going theatrical instead of Reggaeish. A big example of how punk is basic in the DNA of pop music. It is something that has somehow existed and is a needed ideology and not precisely a sound. In previous entries we revised how ''Y'' by Pop Group is pure violence in an urban punk experimentation, but this time we must say that Wire's 154 is more like a claustrophobic Punk, these are the echoes from an afflicted punkish mind, a Punk mind that is suffering and enduring an existential passage.
I am not the biggest fan of ''Pink flag'' while I think of it as a very important album and I admire how distinctive it is (or tried to be), the music itself never clicked with me, there is an amazing song and some others that tend to lose me. 154 On the other hand is an album that keeps me up, awake, alert throughout the entire atmosphere, those ragged guitars and ominous bass, the voices that are so radiant and layered.
This record is very poppish but very oppressive and moving and noisy but also raw and also...damn moody. This thing is far from being inaccesible or discordant or hard to bite for any average music listener, and I think it is there where its success lies; its a record that anyone can enjoy and may find themselves shouting the chorus of the songs after a while, but it is also a record that keeps you with an eye open, letting you feel that something is not precisely right.
It features that asfixia of Goth music and the artistic schizophrenia of things like Genesis or King Crimson?, but efficiently tempered with wit stray dog environment that any good raw rocker will enjoy (rocker...you know, real rocker, prog rockers aren't really rockers, are they?)