Review Summary: Tonto's split the scene...
When a formerly monolith genre band put out an album of new material, especially when they do it some thirty years after their apogee, one can seldom expect a sudden masterpiece to come out of the woodwork. At most, what a loyal fan can hope for are a couple of stellar new songs to add to the band’s playlist rotation. So it goes with Wire. The London post-punk pioneers have been on a steady run of new releases since their return to recording with 2003’s “Send,” and the past three years especially, have seen them match the frenetic productivity of their first trio of records, the peerless “Pink Flag,” “Chairs Missing” and “154.”
By comparison, “Silver/Lead” is at once a more modest and lush affair. The arrangements here are fuller, burying the angular bass-work that set the pace for their early records under a synthetic churn. But they’ve trimmed the songs’ lengths, focusing more on infusing them with pointed crescendos, as opposed to passive meanderings. And on the whole, the band seem more vital than on their past few efforts.
Colin Newman is in fine form here. Like Bob Mould, his voice seems ageless, and over the years, has entombed itself within the apathetic constraints post-punk imposes on singers. His youthfulness has always been pickled in the sort of undemanding vocal acrobatics the genre called for, and if it sounded odd at twenty, today that implacable chant-prone voice acts more as an invigorating element than anything else.
However spirited their work rate is nowadays, Wire’s albums sound dated by today’s electronic music standards. Their guitars have always been far more nimble than their digital aspect, and more than a few songs on “Silver/Lead” suffer from over-production. Opener “Playing Harp for the Fishes” is brought down by plodding industrial effects, and the album’s mid-section falls into the kind of maudlin melodrama that lesser new wave bands plied a trade at.
All that said, “Silver/Lead” does offer some genuinely stirring moments. “Short Elevated Period” is a pressing barrage of needle-thin guitars and abrasive electronics, and pound-for-pound, easily matches the finest moments of Wire’s latter-day output. It may lack the bare thrill of old favourites like “Mannequin,” but at 60, these guys can hardly summon up the same militant sonic priorities.
“Alibi” is less adorned, a skeletal song whose eerie background touches highlight just how deft Wire have gotten at the production board over the past decades. “Brio” is another fine example, a string of undressed verses boosted by noise guitar bursts that briefly colonize your auditory cortex. And with the catchy and lovelorn “Forever & A Day,” Wire may have stumbled onto the first proper radio single they’ve managed in years.
“Silver/Lead’s” finest moment comes on its last song. At two and a-half minutes, the title track is a short and gorgeous mid-tempo piece. Everything that makes a good post-punk song is on display here. A glum rhythm section, some down-tuned celestial electronics lurking in the background, and Newman’s paranoid lyrics on top of it all. In that moment, Wire seem completely unchanged, as beautiful and unsettling and desperate as they sounded on “154.”
Though their work now offers considerably less third-eye opening moments, it is an utter pleasure to see old iconoclasts like Wire, Gang of Four and Public Image Ltd. still kicking around. They may not be straddling any boundary lines anymore, but there’s plenty to be said for music’s old stalwart dissidents still griping away in a world that’s long been taken over by kids with laptops and over-manicured hair.
