Customer Reviews

Chairs Missing

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

CHAIRS MISSING is surely Wire's masterpiece. The title suggests a bunch of people, assembled for a meeting, looking around for somewhere to comfortably sit and proceed with their business. But the chairs are missing, and so things, like Wire's music, are surreal, comical and sometimes uncomfortable, and they will require a bit of adjustment.

On their debut, PINK FLAG, Wire married two minute, three-chord punk thrash with oddly allusive lyrics. Here, the band totally transcends its punk beginnings and creates something entirely new.

Wire spin simple riffs into eerie and shifting dreamscapes that recall Kafka, Brazillian concrete poetry, top-40 pop and modern trance music. The lyrics are allusive, elliptical, witty and surreal. Songs that sound like they are built of one chord exfoliate into subtle and complex structures. Sometimes Wire make absolutely perfect pop-- "Outdoor Miner"-- and sometimes their work has the insistent throb of nightmare ("Mercy"). Some songs capture whimsy ("I Feel Mysterious Today") and others make you look over your shoulder to see what is hiding there ("Heartbeat").

This album was created in 1978 and sounds more contemporary than the works of any of Wire's contemporaries. Its production inspired Nirvana/PJ Harvey producer Steve Albini, who was mesmerised by the layers of guitars.

I listen to this often, and new ideas constantly creep out of the fascinating wordplay. Newman and Lewis trust their listeners, showing us ideas and images, and letting our imaginations, carried by the complex and powerful music, do the rest. This is essential listening.

Wow, did this really come out when I was 14?!?!?!? It's just impossible to grow tired of this album, and I return to its greatness every few years (I play 154 EVERY year). The amount of experimentation with (what breaks down to be) very minimal ingredients has never been equalled by any other band. I love to sit and listen to what's really going on in Wire songs, only to discover that a song may have only one chord and almost no melody - and still sound incredibly complex and evocative. I don't know how they did it - especially as naive, untrained musicians - but too bad they stopped (all good things...) The contrasting surprise here comes in the hooks and melodies that weave through the material. Punk rarely sounded this accessible until regurgitated some 10 years later. This album does the best job of showcasing the two (present and past - or - punk spazz and arty constructivism) facets of the band in 1978, without sounding schizophrenic.

My first impression of "Chairs Missing" was how visual the lyrics were, like most of Captain Beefheart's work where I feel like the artist is 'singing' me a painting. These are challenging works that don't translate well as background music, despite Mike Thorne's '5th Beatle' appearance on keyboards and such. Big Black liked "Heartbeat" so much they gave it their own twist (you can see B.C. Gilbert join them for a rendition on the live Big Black release "Pigpile") and we may not even have a Guided by Voices without the 1 min. 44 sec. nicety "Outdoor Miner". The material really starts to breathe within its own arty confines here, and is a teaser for the band's following heady masterpiece, "154". (The bonus cut here "Question of Degree" is one of their best ever, eliciting yet again my most frequent Wire-inspired question; "are those guitars??")

I've been a fan of Wire since the mid-80s. There are some bands I listened to back then that are only pleasant memories now, but Wire is not one of them. Chairs Missing sounds as fresh and invigorating as it ever has. The songs have a timeless quality. Each time I hear it I'm blown away. I believe that this record, along with 154 and Pink Flag, stands unequalled even today. Compelling, uncompromising, and sonically interesting. No wonder so many bands cite them as an influence, this stuff makes me feel like dropping everything and making some tunes of my own.

What a great album. Wire retain the minimalism of punk, but change the form. They do something analogous to equilizing a blaring rock track and changing its nature by, say, removing the drum track so that a new sound emerges. We have the insistence and urgency of Wire's peers, but the music delves into more interesting textures and moods. This is courtesy in part of producer Mike Thorne, who worked closely with the band and lent a real sense of sonic adventure to the proceedings.

Enjoy the icy textures of this record. Enjoy the quality of the material. And don't sleep on the closing track "Too Late", an aggressive outting which as others have noted almost defines the possibilities of minimalism in rock.

This is an easy choice for the best album from Wire, an always interesting group. Pink Flag was an excellent beginning, but that album gave us a band that was very raw, impatient, and loud. Wire tones it down here, adds more intricate sounds and song structures, and offers a greater variety of styles. It can be bleak and melancholy('marooned'), light and appealing('outdoor miner'), amusing and silly('I am the fly') and energetic and boisterous('Too Late'). A very thoughtful and impressively laid out album, highly recommended.

This is my favorite of Wire's '70s albums. Several songs on the album retain the punk approach of _Pink Flag_, but with tighter playing and an increased openess to experimentation ("Sand in My Joints", "Too Late", "I Feel Mysterious Today", and "From The Nursery"). Those are all excellent songs that aren't too different from the best tracks on _Pink Flag_ even if they are a bit longer. The band stretches more on some songs ("Practice Makes Perfect", "Being Sucked in Again", "Men 2nd") to good effect. A few tracks are quite arty but work well (such as "French Film Blurred", and the wonderful "I Am the Fly"). "Outdoor Miner" is a great pop song with typically wierd lyrics. "Used To" (a personal favorite) has slow, drawn out guitar chords, under a very melodic vocal. There are a couple of good bonus tracks added to the album as well. This is one of my desert-isle discs ("Marooned" would be appropriate).

Overflowing with innovative, potent ideas, this album is one of my five all-time favorites. Some additional songs are added to the original album sequence which are also quite brilliant (i.e., the sinister "Question of Degree," with its striking bridge). In this effort, the band took to the studio like Einstein to a chalkboard, toying with song structure and melody in unprecedented ways, and doing so without compromising the listenability of the album. The band was obviously trying to stand out as a creative force in the explosive post-'76 British music scene, and succeeded in spades. Their work continues to be imitated, but can only be aspired to.

'Chairs Missing',Wire's follow up to 'Pink Flag' their adrenalin rush of a debut album is a challenging yet unsettling listen.Darkness and despondency are abundant throughout the album.Indeed the album title itself is a reference to mental instability and there is no let up in the lyrics or the jagged,spiky music onto which these words are painted.Topics dealt with here include S&M ('Practice Makes Perfect'),homocide('French Film Blurred'),suicide('Another The Letter'),drowning('Men 2nd'),isolation('Marooned'),pain('Sand In My Joints') and darkness('Heartbeat').It's not all doom and gloom though as 'Chairs Missing' spawned two singles,'I Am The Fly' and the irresistable 'Outdoor Miner' a perfect two minute pop song if ever I heard one.Following 'Chairs Missing'Wire released one more album, the experimental '154' before splitting for a number of years due to a lack of songwriting ideas.If you are new to the band the first three Wire albums are all essential listening and demonstrate how a band can change musically in the space of three years.

Although Wire wore a punk overcoat, sonically speaking, on their first three albums, there is no doubt that theirs was a creativity that would have surfaced whatever the current vogue, as their relevance today shows. Chairs Missing was their Harvest follow up to the arty 21-track debut, Pink Flag, but boasting a mere 15 tracks, which ranged from just over a minute long, to an epic 5.45 for Mercy. The lyrics, printed prose fashion in the booklet, make an interesting and stimulating read even divorced from the musical settings contained in the grooves. Producer Mike Thorne adds extra coloration and texture with his synths and keyboards and Kate Lukas adds flute to one tune. 
Chairs Missing included the single I Am The Fly, although as it had been released 7 months earlier than the album and had a B-side from Pink Flag, it may be older than the rest of the album. Outdoor Miner was extracted as a single along with its flipside, Practice Makes Perfect, in January 1979.
A longer version of Outdoor Miner is included as a bonus track, along with both sides of a non-album single that was released in June 1979. 
The appearance of Chairs Missing on CD in the UK in 1990 proved influential on indie and Britpop bands such as Elastica and Blur, and still sounds fresh and vital today

After the choppy minimalist punk of "Pink Flag" Wire evolved into "Chairs Missing". A slightly eerie but fantastic set of songs only slightly longer than the "Pink Flag" set.

There's no escaping that under the artsy minimalism there's a hint of pop sensibility. Catch tunes like Outdoor Miner personify that aspect of Wire. Here they've slowed down and begun to take advantage of studio engineering to effect their sound as well (something they'd take much further in 154).

It says something about this band's versitility and growth that some may not like "Pink Flag" and love "Chairs Missing" and vice versa. As for me, it's another masterpiece by one of the greatest and most influential bands of that era.