Artistically speaking, Wire had the shortest attention span of any band in the new wave era, save for, of course, the short lived Sex Pistols. Pink Flag's fuzzy art-punk had come and gone. The disjointed melodies of Chairs Missing were fading fast. And upon the band's third album, it was time for a change…again. Their follow up to Chairs Missing, titled 154 for the number of gigs the band had played up to that point, was well beyond what anyone could have expected at that point, not just from Wire, but of any band. Everything was stretched to new extremes. The singles were made catchier and more glossy and beautiful. The rockers were more abrasive and grating. And the slower songs had become eerie, droning funereal dirges. Everything was turned on its head, and as a result, it's one of the band's greatest works.

At first listen, 154 is a bit of a head-scratcher. Surely, some fans of Pink Flag had given up by this point. But to simply continue appeasing consumers would go against any of Wire's ideals. Not that they were million sellers. They were far from it. But they were creating art. And art doesn't compromise. Thus, 154 stands as their vision—an oblique bridge between Before and After Science and Unknown Pleasures.

Wire actually seemed to care about making truly challenging music, whether or not it was commercially viable. The spoken word/choir ambience of "The Other Window" was just about the most bizarre thing the band had recorded to date. But "A Touching Display," all seven minutes of it, just may have surpassed it in weirdness. Like a noisy, frightening prog take on post-punk, the song marks the where Wire had reached their absolute weirdest point yet. Confounding as these tracks may have been, this was still a rock band playing rock music, despite a few ambient nigh goth excursions.

Bassist Graham Lewis had begun taking on more vocal duties within the band, and as such, it is his voice we hear in opener "I Should Have Known Better," rather than that of frontman Colin Newman. Newman was still the primary vocalist, but it had become clear that any structural notions of a band were quickly being deconstructed as well as the band's take on genre. After "I Should Have Known Better," which builds a magnificently suspenseful tension in the album's entrance, Newman takes over on "Two People in a Room," a bassy high speed punk song that sounds kind of like Wire, but with more lengthy single note verses and more shouting.

"Single K.O." rocks in a more groove-oriented and dark manner, sounding like a more abstract cousin to Joy Division's "She's Lost Control." The two-minute "On Returning" is the album's high point in post-punk aggression, all off-kilter riffs and strange effects, Wire singing about some sort of Orwellian tourism story, repeating furiously, "An evening of fun in the metropolis of your dream." The build-up and release of the vaguely industrial sounding "A Mutual Friend" is another highlight, segueing into the Krautrock influenced "Blessed State."

Aside from the abrasive rockers, the epic ballads and the more abstract songs, there were, however, some of Wire's most accessible songs to date. Take, for instance, "The 15th," a lovely pop tune under the guise of post-punk. And "Map Ref. 41degrees N 93degrees W," not surprisingly titled in the most cumbersome manner imaginable, is quite possibly the band's most straightforward and perfect pop song of all time. The fact that it was included on the band's most difficult releases makes it clear just how unpredictable the band set out on being.

The band made it a few more gigs past 154 and called it quits after this record. Reaching their musical apex after only three albums, they determined that they had run out of good ideas, only to return seven years later with the decidedly more accessible, yet still artsy The Ideal Copy. Nonetheless, 154 closes up the trilogy of the band's three finest albums, not coincidentally also their first three albums recorded. The band did get a little weirder, as evident on the minimalist The Drill, but it was never as good as the original storm of creativity, which closed with 154's overwhelming sonic maelstrom.

Similar Albums/Albums Influenced:
Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
Spoon - Girls Can Tell
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures


Jeff Terich
09.08.2005