Customer Reviews

Pink Flag

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Its an indisputable fact that "Pink Flag" is a crucial piece of punk history, and even a crucial piece of the history of pop music in general. "Pink Flag" is an album almost any punk enthusiast should love, and one that even non-punks should be able to get into. The film-intellectuals-meet-minimal-composers-meet-Ramones-fans formula is unique (or was until half the bands in the world began showing the "Pink Flag" influence) and still thrilling. "Pink Flag" is without a doubt the spunkiest album of Wire's catalog, and an ideal starting place for recent Wire converts. I feel swell after swell of pop excitement at the openings of each of the album's better songs (which there are plenty of), and none of the tracks are anything close to dull. I imagine Wire take some criticism from the more staunchly political punk sects, because there is nothing *overtly* political here (which is not to say that "Pink Flag" is without socio-political critique), but that's never stopped me from loving this album, and I spend most of my time listening to The Ex. But enough about why "Pink Flag" is such a fantastic album. There are already enough highly intelligent discussions of Wire's virtues here, written by reviewers who know a good deal more about Wire than I do, and I will defer to them on those issues.

Mainly I want to explain why you should buy the EMI import version (available here on Amazon[.com], and not badly priced) of this flawless album instead of the Restless Retro version. First of all, the EMI import has one more bonus track than the Restless edition does, and its a really good song. But more importantly, the Restless edition plays at such a faint volume level that I found it tough to enjoy. The sound quality is fine, but its very, very, quiet. If you want to, I dunno, "rock out" at home, you hafta jack up the volume til the CD sounds distorted and fuzzy, and the music gets muddled by that white noise hum/hiss you get when you turn up stereos to high. On headphones its okay - unless you want to go outside and, oh I dunno, ride in a car or bus, or walk near traffic or in densely populated areas. It gets to be very frustrating. The EMI edition has none of these problems, sounds great, and has that enticing bonus track; put your money on this one.

Like other punk bands Wire strived to re-focus rock from it's growing excesses, but they took that aesthetic a step further. Unlike other artists Wire's aim wasn't a return to rock's roots, but minimalism. Wire didn't approach music as a rock band, but as an art experiment. On Pink Flag, Wire eliminate every extraneous element resulting pure, angular music. While not musically accomplished (in fact, the band members admit they were barely competent technically), Pink Flag contains an astounding variety and depth of creative ideas.

While other punk bands (The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, etc.) acheived notoriety with genuine angst and shock, Wire distinguished themselves through unpredictabilty and vocalist Colin Newman's sly, oft acerbic wit (while oft incomprehensible, he's always compelling). In a sense it seems Wire's limited musicianship actually works to their advantage; since they have limited tools the band is forced to rely soley on ideas and chemistry. The 21 songs on Pink Flag rarely exceed three minutes (most are 1-2 min in duration) and rarely conform to any standard notions of song structure. With titles like "Field Day for the Sundays", "Three Girl Rhumba", "Ex Lion Tamer", and "Mannequin", many understandably view the songs as minimalist paintings tranformed into music. Arty as Wire can be at times, they're anything but pretentious. Pithy and snobbish as Wire might seem, Pink Flag is remarkably entertaining; it's intense, wryly witty, and at times undeniably funny. Wire's breadth of ideas is remarkable; they cover ground which includes proto-hardcore ("106 Beats That", "Different to Me"), tweaked power-pop ("Reuters", "Champs"), power-blues ("Lowdown"), and even spare texture experiments ("Strange"). "Mr. Suit" is the only marginal track... and it's still pretty enjoyable.

Some have argued that Pink Flag's songs are only fragments, but close analysis reveals Wire's brilliance; each song serves to convey it's ideas as expediently as possible and once this objective is reached it ends immediately. In his Rollingstone review Greil Marcus remarked about the lack of personality on Pink Flag ("You hear cleverness, wit, irony, but not personality."). While this might be accurate the lack of intimacy isn't a problem in the musical context and actually coincides well with Wire's aesthetic . One of the many things that makes Pink Flag unique is it's combination of emotional intensity and vaguely arty distance (which eventually became dominant in their later work). Wire's somewhat impersonal approach also makes Pink Flag transcendent; unlike many late 70s punk bands who focused on the sociopolitical climate, Pink Flag's more esoteric themes (both musical and lyrical) make it vital and relevant 25 years after it's release. Pink Flag is proudly touted as a profound influence by artists as diverse as Big Black, Sonic Youth, The Minutemen, Elastica ...and REM (who covered a more straight-forward version of "Strange" on their album Document). Wire would later make other ambitious and noteworthy albums (most notably "Chairs Missing" and "154"), but never made another as seminal, ageless, and visionary as Pink Flag.

Greil Marcus wrote that Pink Flag owed more to Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave than to the Sex Pistols, or something like that. Cryptic though it may be, he's on the right track: Pink Flag takes Malcolm MacLaren's idea of pumping rock songs full of Situationist manifestoes the next natural step: the songs themselves play like Situationist "moments," bite-sized Impressions rather than fully-realized Ideas. I'd include it in the (always paradoxical) Punk canon because of the sense of dread that most of these songs manage to convey. Wire didn't suffer from the same kind of paranois you find on the Pistols' "Holidays in the Sun" or SLF's "Suspect Device; where tracks like those convey an Us-against-Them-but-we're-Them-too mentality, Wire relies on terse, direct songs with vague, abstract lyrics to give the sense that "There's something going on that's not quite right." And the fact that they never give you enough information to figure out exactly what that something is makes Pink Flag a creepy listen. Highlights for me include "Reuters;" "Lowdown" for its insistence on jackhammering a single riff for 2 and a half minutes; "Strange" for parodying Punk's buzzsaw guitar with a sound like the bloaded corpse of Steve Jones; and "Champs," just for rockin'.

Quite simply Pink Flag is one of the best punk albums of all time. Personally, I think this album blows away Chairs Missing. The latter album shows a band less inclined to punk, and more interested in developing their songs and sounds. That said, Pink Flag's songs are not sloppy, they just say what they have to say and then end it--a lesson more bands should heed. Wire has so many good ideas on this album that they can afford to cut off a great track like "Field Day for the Sundays" after 28 seconds. A lesser band would have made it the centerpiece of their album.

Wire's 1977 album PINK FLAG has been unmatched since, by Wire or anyone. Short, odd, angular, sarcastic songs, 22 in all, remind the listener that punk rock can be simultaneously smart, detached, and visceral. PINK FLAG is an essential punk rock album, standing alongside THE CLASH, NEVERMIND THE BOLLOCKS, THE RAMONES, and THE UNDERTONES as the best of that era.

Note: r.e.m. covered the track "Strange" on their 1987 album Document. The original is here on Pink Flag, and it sounds great.

New to Wire? Check out Pink Flag, then Chairs Missing and 154. A compilation entitled "1985-1990: The A-list" is a good summary of that stage of their career, and it also makes a good compliment to Pink Flag.

Do you have Wire CDs already? Pink Flag is the best of their pre-1980 releases, and their best overall. Don't miss it.

ken32

As far as I'm concerned, you either like *Pink Flag* considerably or you don't really have the background to evaluate it and much of the semipopular culture of the last twenty-five years. But do you need to spread the gospel of *Pink Flag*? No: the first true cover band, the Ex Lion Tamers, was formed to play Pink Flag note-for-note as an opening act for the reformed Wire (who might need defenders). Do you need to own a copy of *Pink Flag*? I'm not gonna say that; I don't think it would hurt your musical appreciation skills any, but it might interact poorly with Adderall or other "mind-enhancing" substances.

Having made a instant impact on the 70's British Punk/ Post-Punk scene with their clinical and insular combination of harsh minimalism, dense and occasionally confrontational lyrics, with jerky, angular guitar sounds and experimental flourishes, the band: (Consisting of: guitarists Colin Newman, George Gill...Technician (and also on guitar) Bruce Gilbert, along with bassist Graham Lewis and drummer Robert Grey) ) took the relatively confining structures of Punk, and embellished it with constant experimentation and metamorphosing, that would soon see them slowly edge their music into a musical space that would also touch on the fringe boundaries of Art-rock /Post-Punk / Experimental Punk.

"Pink Flag" their debut album, is largely a musically brittle sound, that is stripped down, to its most primal and basic elements. With the gloriously fractured and frequently sharp guitar lines, working alongside the bleak, aggressive, tightly compact, distortion and dissonance. Harsh drums remaining, bracing, and formidable, and the rhythms are stripped down and jagged, with the concentrated musical and lyrical attack, not a million miles away from a more detached and stripped down version of the sound that a band such as 'Gang of Four', were so skillfully able to demonstrate.

The band are arguably masters of tightly compact, concentrated, assaulting songs that although feel largely lacking in ambitious production values are undeniably diverse in the interpretation of tracks, and the band are easily able to spin from the ferocity and impressive energy of Tracks such as: "Reuters", "Pink Flag", "12XU", "Ex Lion Tamer", "Mannequin"....which all contain that urgent rush, and tension between calm & release (helped greatly by singer "Colin Newman's" intense & gnarled vocals, that lapses into calmer tones more the more melodic-sounding tracks). And although forgoing the sheer abrasion of punk, are still just about able to expertly walk a fine line, between the confrontation and immediate unchecked power of Punk, as well as effortlessly fusing acute lyricism, compositional integrity, blistering anthems, as well as making sure that songs were as infectious as they are simplistic, aggressive and focused.

But not all songs were layers of overwhelming sonic force, the album is peppered with transitional tracks, the broke up the album beautifully...very short memorable tracks such as : "Field Day for the Sundays", "Brazil", "The Commercial", "Different to Me" were all too short to truly classify as songs, yet contained enough enduring or catchy hooks to act as stopgaps between tracks. More surprisingly is a collection of more melodic, almost punk-lite, alternative rock tracks, that essentially followed conventional pop structures, and come complete with memorable melodies, highlight the constant experimentation of ideas within the band, so: "Three Girl Rhumba", "Feeling Called Love", "Strange"although not necessarily pop tunes, are far less confrontational, and abrasive than other tracks on the album, and arguably as worth while, in their inclusion as gives the album some much needed diversity.

For those that are (like me) new to Wire, the energetic and noisy aesthetic, relentless bursts of energy, jagged, Cold fractured sound, and constant battles of tension and abstraction, maybe a little heavy going for some, but if you are looking to expand your collection to include a little Punk/Post-Punk, you really should own this!!, after the initial surprise, at the razor-thin production and challenging dynamics...that you'll quickly become accustomed to. You'll find an album of hypnotic abrasion and relatively brief compact tracks that take a little while to truly grow into. But like a lot of the best music that doesn't instantly prove gratifing, your apprecation of it will grow substansually with every listen, and arguably proves to be more worthwhile in the long run, when an album grows on you over time. If your someone that is relatively diverse in their choice of music and enjoy music from some of these following artists: "Minutemen", "Gang of four", "Buzzcocks", "Husker Du", "Sonic Youth", "Television", than this album deserves to be considered amongst such distingushed artists. And considering that this was released in 1977...makes the sheer scope & delivery of this landmark album, all the more astonishing.

Really, what more can I say about Wire's Pink Flag that hasn't already been said? The album is so good, so burned in the retina of my brain (even though I still cannot for the life of us unscramble Graham Lewis' lyrics), so nearly perfect that it's sort of hard to write about. In a perfect world, whatever nonsense I may have to say about the record would be moot, as you should already own this record (along with Chairs Missing and 154, Wire's second and third albums respectively). But for those of you who may be enraptured by the recent flurry of post-punk revivalists who continue to make quite a stir, let the reissue campaign of the first three records introduce you to the band that Interpol, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand, and Bloc Party only wish they could be.

Recorded in 1977, Pink Flag is an immaculately concise punk record, even as Wire recognized that punk was becoming a self-parody and willed themselves to develop through experimentation with structure, technology, and process. Pink Flag's 21 songs cover a mere 35 minutes, many of them clocking in around 90 seconds or "when they ran out of words" as bassist / vocalist Graham Lewis once quipped. Energetic and volatile, each of the songs on Pink Flag thrash through the repetoire of reductivist power-pop riffs as immediately catchy and aggressive as anything by the Damned, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols. But even on their first album, Wire demonstrated an uncanny ability with chord changes and melodic shifts that by '70s standards were much artier than their punk bretheren. Of course, in the aftermath of math-rock's acrobatic twists and turns, Wire's Pink Flag hardly sounds unpredictable... but if it weren't for Wire would we really have Laddio Bollocko, for example? Probably not.

The album's opening track "Reuters" is an anxious introduction to Wire's provocation with lead vocalist Colin Newman over-annunciating a polemic against government's abuse of propaganda (sound familiar?) on top of an increasingly agitated metronomic blast of bass, twin guitar, and drums. Elsewhere near perfect pop songs develop out of the angular punk slashing, as heard on "Ex Liontamers" and "Mannequin." Wire ends the album with the monotone anthem "12 X U" which many have declared their "Anarchy In The UK." With a motorik rhythm punctured by concise punk riff, the track simultaneously decries homophobia and censorship with the song's entire lyrics "I saw you in the mag kissing the man / 1 2 X U!"

So yeah, Wire are a seminal band for a reason, and it all started with this album. If you don't have it, please do yourself a favor and buy this album. You won't regret it!

Out of all the major punk albums, this one might be the most original. What makes it so unique in the realm of punk rock is the vast diversity of song structures Wire tackles here. Some songs are four minutes long and some songs are less than a minute long, which may happen frequently in the albums of today, but for the time was considered groundbreaking. It's this quirky unpredictability that makes Pink Flag so fresh and exciting to this day. As with most British punk albums, the vocals are barely audible, but no matter-the relentless energy and passion make up for any misgivings there may be. Although the vocals are hard to understand, the vocal phrasing is pitch-perfect; Colin Newman's singing here has the assurance of Roger Daltrey in his prime. As far as Pink Flag goes, it is one of those albums that just doesn't let up. From the swaggering confidence of "It's So Obvious" to the catchy grooves of "Three Girl Rhumba", this is one of the most essential of punk albums. It is ironic that an album this artsy can also offer such a good time. It's best not to pay any attention to the lyrics because they serve only the melody, yes, melody, of the guitar lines. This isn't Bob Dylan, this is 1977 British punk. Lyrics aside, let me just tell you that unlike most amateurish punk bands, these guys can play. Pink Flag does not even remotely resemble a debut album, these guys sound like they have been playing together for years. Spin magazine heralded Pink Flag the #2 punk album of all time after the Ramones' debut album. You'd better believe it. A+

The is Wire's 1977 debut album, without which there would be no Mission Of Burma, no Minutemen, no R.E.M., no Hüsker Dü, no Joy Division/New Order, no Sonic Youth, no Pixies, and no Nirvana.
PERIOD.