Always expect the unexpected. That’s Wire. It doesn’t always extend to their support acts however – remember the Ex Lion Tamers, who performed the early material that the band had sworn not to touch?
More conventional supports tend to fit some sort of blueprint, and tonight is no exception. Weekend – not a reformed Young Marble Giants offshoot, but a rather more current Slumberland act – fit quite well into the Wire demographic. Young and American, they wear their record collections on their sleeves. Grinding bass, precise drumming and vocals buried below swathes of noise, there’s a decided shoegaze element to their sound, alongside Joy Division as their most obvious reference (with Wire a close second). In fact, another act they remind this punter of is Dub Sex, who appeared in a Glasgow guest slot some 20 years ago.
Messrs Lewis, Newman and Gotobed are perhaps a wee bit more predictable than their old days. This may be down to the fact that Bruce Gilbert has departed the band, so there’s no chance of the current lineup performing behind a sheet, or indeed, from within a shed (an aside: should the band not now be known as “Wre”… or “Ire”, come to that?)
Matt Simms (from It Hugs Back) supplies the youth policy and auxiliary guitar/noise live these days. A balding punter vocally disapproves of the new member, though it’s quickly established that this is purely good-natured jealousy, due to Simms’ flowing locks.
The band are here, in effect to promote their Red Barked Tree album. Plugging and indeed song titles are limited, though the band do acknowledge their pleasure to be in Scotland (they’re enjoying the climate, says a tongue-in-cheek Newman) and dismiss the calls for golden oldies – “12xu”, “Our Swimmer” and “Options R” among the shouts from a crowd that’s a mix of over 40s and those who’ve picked up on the ‘seminal’ tag very much after the act, due to their youth.
For the uninitiated, the band recorded three major label albums, split, and when they reformed, refused to play the older material (hence the employment of a ‘covers’ act on one memorable occasion). Nowadays, the odd track is selected at random for an airing, and after ‘Down To This’ and a few more selections from their recent, post-millennial releases, the bass grind of ‘Two People In a Room’ strikes up and it’s like it’s 1979 all over again.
From then in, it’s a mix of the unfamiliar (i.e. post-2000) and, er, the just as unfamiliar – ‘Culture Vultures’, never officially released, is dropped into the setlist in unheralded, almost throwaway style. (Edit: did they really play this, or am I confusing it with something else e.g. ‘106 Beats That’?)
Happily, the selection from the new album and 2003’s Send are on a par with anything from their back catalogue. Indeed, it’s the mid-period material, if anything, that disappoints. ‘Kidney Bingos’ seems a little ragged as its pop chorus is buried in a slightly muddy mix; ‘Boiling Boy’, roughly a third of the way into their 40-year career, likewise falls flat, while Lewis delivers encore ‘Drill’ in over-restrained, almost perfunctory style.
The biggest problem for me is that the 80s trio of tunes are taking up precious space which could be occupied by, say, ‘One of Us’, or, apparent crowd favourite ‘Our Swimmer’.
However, the more recent material more than makes up for this – 2003’s ‘Spent’ is delivered in ferocious style while ‘Morever’ sounds as fresh as anything bands half their age are knocking out these days.
As by way of confirmation that this band are very much back, the encores – the sumptuous ‘Red Barked Trees’ and its predecessor by what, almost 35 years, a visceral ‘Pink Flag’ – sit alongside each other rather nicely, thank you very much. Indeed, the notoriously hard-to-please Wire fans are won over by the new material – and I wasn’t expecting that.
- Barry Adamson - 6 February 2025
- C81-C86-Go! – Creeping Bent at 30 - 3 February 2025
- Beautiful Cosmos - 27 January 2025