“The time is right for Wire, right now. Welcome them again, they've come back to save you.” - Artrocker. In the 5 years since the release of their last album ‘Send’, Wire have expounded, reviewed, contracted, lain dormant, recovered, expanded and through all that have shed an old skin and grown a new one. ‘Send’ itself was a jolt to the senses which saw the epithet “Seminal Art-Punks” become a compulsory inclusion in reviews and introduced Wire to a huge new (and younger) audience in addition to their already devoted followers.
Over the next two years a series of archive releases helped to broaden the critically-prevelant view that Wire are one of the most important alternative rock groups of the last three decades, a theory which was consolidated as accepted wisdom with the spring 2006 reissues of their brilliant trio of late-70s albums. Yet as countless contemporary indie heroes-in-waiting lined up to cite vintage Wire as a major influence, the group were already planning their next phase of action. Wire in 2008 is not the same as it was before but then Wire is never the same as it was before. ‘Object 47’ - the 47th physical object in Wire's discography - is nonetheless only the group's 11th studio album. It is the second product of an arc of work begun in 2006 which has so far thrown up the very well received EP ‘Read And Burn 03’ EP (from which no tracks appear on ‘Object 47’) and stands as a confident statement of where Wire are in 2008, as ever facing forward. Retaining their characteristically idiosyncratic mix of an avant‐garde mindset with classic pop timing, ‘Object 47’ is less angular and startlingly explosive than the output of the ‘Send’ period, heading in a comparatively more melodic direction, yet still dedicated to an innovative and uncompromised approach. Created by the same Lewis & Newman writing partnership responsible for the 21 staccato pop punches of their 1977 ‘Pink Flag’ debut, this new album boasts what the group call "tunes with zoom", a unique formula that somehow manages to sound wholly Wire (in a classic sense) and wholly contemporary. Accurately summed up by Uncut’s assertion that Wire’s continued relevance “says as much about their endless creative reinvention as our own acceptance of balding art school punks."
Track Listing:
1. One Of Us (3:45)
2. Circumspect (3:13)
3. Mekon Headman (2:
4. Perspex Icon (3:16)
5. Four Long Years (3:45)
6. Hard Currency (3:50)
7. Patient Flees (5:23)
8. Are You Ready? (4:44)
9. All Fours (4:05)
