Wire
Chairs Missing

THE REVIEW

The first album by Wire, Pink Flag, was almost a philosophical masterpiece. It was an essay on brevity, that typically modern obsession with speed and synthesis. It’s no coincidence that the song format with an average duration of 3 minutes became the most emblematic artistic expression of the twentieth century. Wire, being talented from the start and therefore ambitious, sought to conduct a sound experiment with that album. To reach the maximum levels of compactness, to encapsulate the most ideas, sounds, and variations in the smallest temporal portions.

The second work, Chairs Missing, had to be necessarily different. A move towards the classic song form was in order. It was evident. But how to do it while remaining innovative? Wire achieves this by maintaining a fundamental characteristic of Pink Flag: unpredictability. In this way, in the tracks of Chairs Missing, the genius short circuit proposed by them becomes even clearer. The structure of the song and its opposite, the deconstructed, the dis-order, constantly call each other in a game that never tires, making these compositions immensely rich and fluid. Elusive. Each song sets the premises accepted by the canon: brevity, immediacy, melodiousness. But it undermines them from within. Thus, brevity does not prevent originality and imagination. Thus, immediacy does not prevent the development of enormous compositional complexity. Thus, melodiousness is accepted, yet almost entirely forsaking the chorus.

Wire offers a reflection on what a pop song is by moving on its limits. Just one more step and we would be beyond. But they don’t take that step. They remain there. And it is fascinating to watch them walk this narrow boundary like daring acrobats. And see them triumph without ever falling. It is a long process of deconstruction.

As mentioned: Almost no song here resorts to a chorus. Yet, how many catchy fragments! After several listens, the album will always retain something elusive, its center will always shift elsewhere. As said above, it is the unpredictability that shakes these compositions and grants them their eternal alterity. Wire always does something strange, anomalous. Something you don’t expect. The only piece that is truly just a pop song is Outdoor Miner, but it is such a successful pop song that it is welcome and thus a sort of cherry on top of the post-punk cake.
With Chairs Missing, New Wave begins to define itself and come of age.