Wire: Change Becomes Us

Having recently read Wilson Neate's very detailed biography of Wire, one of the main themes of the book was the struggle between creating experimental art music and also having enough pop sensibilities to sell some records and keep the project viable.  The book makes clear that the push-and-pull was largely between Bruce Gilbert, who was dedicated completely to the former, and Colin Newman, who liked to experiment (especially on his solo albums) but also pushed to have enough accessibility to make sure the band could survive in the marketplace.

The 2004 album Send, a bracing, remarkable record that seems to strike a balance and which was, according to the book, Newman and Gilbert working closely together to reconcile their varying tendencies, proved to be the end of the band's original lineup.  Gilbert left soon after and has not been particularly active on recordings, though he has worked on other projects more to his liking.

A previous owner of the disc put a sticker that could not be removed on the front cover, which is why only this much is shown!

As for Wire, they kept on, working with other guitarists before having Matthew Simms, a much younger musician, join the band as an official member.  Neate's book points out that the group has become much more of what Newman had always intended and, whatever the success of that might be, Wire very much remains an active and intriguing band.  Not as experimental as it once was, but for gents of a certain age and given how few bands of the late Seventies are still making original and viable music, the group consistently delivers great music. 

In 2013, Wire put out Change Becomes Us, in which the quartet revisited and retooled a group of songs from more than thirty years prior, many of which were to be on an album following their first trio of classics: Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154.  The band imploded before that record could be made and the strange, though fascinating, Document and Eyewitness, featured live "performance art" renditions of many of these tunes, while others appeared in various iterations elsewhere.

So, as a consolation prize . . .

Change Becomes Us is an intriguing project, taking songs that in most cases successfully blend accessbility with experimentation and presenting them in the "modern" Wire format, honed since Gilbert's departure.  Robert Grey's steady precision continues to be essential, Graham Lewis' bass also anchors the tunes with fluidity and solidity and his lyrics are always interesting and arresting and Simms helps flesh out the sound in understated, but important, ways.

For those of us who only got the barest of glimpses into the possibility of what Document and Eyewitness and other sources hinted at, Change Becomes Us is a realization that shows that the ideas were largely sound and that the recent development of the band provides a maturity and craftsmanship that shows that Wire has so much to offer more than four decades after it first made a splash in the punk era.