Customer Reviews

Send

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Their best album in about 15 years, by my count. This album seems to mark a reenergized Wire, the kings of minimalist noise, who being older and wiser have gained a keen awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, and are ready and willing to make some more classic albums/CDs.

The sound harkens back to "Pink Flag" in that it is full of energy and full of insistent guitar buzz. This is a harsher sound, though. My first response to the album was "blimey, they should have more dynamics in the songs - maybe start with one distorted guitar for a minute before moving on to two". But, it hit me more correctly later. It's a mood. It's a cold, hard, angry mood.

Albums like "Manscape", while not entirely successful, hinted at what Wire can reflect - a harsh portrait of a world that has become a heartless system, where human emotion is something to be studied and manipulated rather than mythologized. Well, we're very much in that world. We're in a world dominated by a nation seemingly run by a shadow government, whose leaders tell demonstrably false lies to a population almost desperate to believe in myth. The aggression in this music, combined with the usual harsh bleak landscape, seems to me to perfectly mirror our times.

In short, it's effective art. Harsh, minimal art. If you've been a fan of Wire at any point, you should give this a spin or three.

Listening to the following CD it is hard to believe that this band has been playing together in some form or another for over 25 years.This has to be the best Wire album outside the initial 3.I am suprise how this CD sounds alot like some of the Chicago area bands that were inspired by Wire in the 80's like Big Black,(Early)Naked Raygun and The Effigies.This is one of the most bombastic albums I heard since Big Black's 'Songs abouth F***N.The music is very abrasive,like Big Black's sound.The sound of this CD is kinda like Low-Fi/Hi-Fi industrial with Guitars that sounds like they were recorded by plugging straight into the mixing board.The vocals sounds like primitive version of Wire's 154 era.So if your a fan of Wire,Big Black,The Fall,Gang of Four I could not praise this cd enough so please go out and buy it maybe we can encourage others to start making decent music again.

Wow! First let this music wash all over you and then upon the second listen let it pound you into submission. But make sure you play your stereo at full volume both times if you can take it. This music restores my faith in the fact that a band can still rock and roll without the profit motive dangling like a carrot on a stick in front of their noses. The listener must realize that Bruce Gilbert (guitarist) is now 57 years old and this is the kind of fresh music that the group is still capable of. I don't think the same could be said of the Rolling Stones when Jagger and/or Richards were the same age. Thank you Wire. I can hardly wait for your next burst of creative energy.

This is Wire's first full-length in over a decade and gone are the New Order-ish stylings of their late 80's incarnation. "Send" isn't simply a redo of their first phase either. There are hints of "Pink Flag" in all the songs here, but it lacks the minimalistic sound of that release. From the opening of the CD to the end you are bombarded with a solid-state wash of guitars that pound out repititious licks and are topped with aggressive, often distorted vocals. They haven't completely lost their affinity to electronics and the better tracks on the CD tend to be the ones where techno elements begin to creep in. Note: 7 of the 11 tracks are from Read & Burn 1+2.

I was a died in the wool fan - even liking the 80's stuff (until IBTABA) and all the Newman solo albums. But as far as the general 'these guys have got it all back' opinion goes, I'm gonna have to demur. This album has really admirable energy, a return of the biting guitar sounds and the variety of tone they showed in the 70's. But where are the tunes? Well, they're here on 'Being Watched', 'The Agfers of Kodak', 'You Can't Leave Now' and that's about it. The rest is pretty much two chords is good enough. Heaven help us that we might expect a key change. This repetition is art stuff really irks me. Guys that have been at it for this long should be able to come up with better. Their recent live tour of Australia were incredibly crappy, most notably for bad playing (I thought at least Gilbert might have had some chops) and appalling guitar sounds. Turns out Mike Thorne must have been the talented one. I can only hope that if they're gonna keep going with this band they show the level of improvement they mustered between Pink Flag and Chairs Missing before they release the next one.

now i see where wire was heading from the time after the ideal copy. this album is not only a logical advance, but also recaptures the power of pink flag, the eeriness of 154 and the best of everything else they have done. there are no weak tracks. there is no one else sounding like this. the best album i have heard in years! i can't stop listenning to it. do yourself a favor and buy this cd. hoping for a tour in 2005.

While nominally a new album, Send is really a compillation of tracks from Wire's two recent EPs Read & Burn 1 & 2, assembled with four additional new songs. As such, it serves as an efficient introduction to Wire, phase III, but it's also but uneven.

The stongest tracks are culled from Read & Burn 1. On this release, Wire dramatically reconfigured the minimalist-punk blueprint they created with Pink Flag (1977), adding a huge dose of amphetamines in the form intense distortion, with just a hint of industrial influence. For a group in the third decade of their career (with most members well into their 50s), R & B 1 was remarkably vital relevant (though with all it's noisy intensity, it did take awhile for it to sink in with me).

On Read & Burn 2, Wire started to fall into a familiar pattern: After Pink Flag, Wire became progressively more difficult and deliberately arty, and made less accessible music (esp in the late 80s and early 90s). Read & Burn 2 follows a similar blueprint to it's prodecessor, but Wire employ greater use of studio effects, and the songs are more measured (much like Chairs Missing and 154). While this does does give R&B 2 more texture, it also saps much of the spontaneity, humor and accessibilty that made R&B 1 so much fun.

Unsurpringly, the best material on Send is from R&B 1. "In the Art of Stopping" and "Comet" are taut, catchy, songs driven by Gilbert's menacing guitar, Lewis & Gotobed's propulsive foundation, all put home with Newman's sardonic, funny vocals (it's refreshing that Wire have rediscovred a sense of humor). Unfortunately, only three songs here are from R&B 1, and the remaining material becomes a little tedious, and just kind of blends together (though "99.9" is ominously hypnotic, and the buzz-saw guitar on "Mr. Marx's Table" make it moderately compelling). It's also unfortunate that the best track from R&B 2, the melodic, almost poppy "Trash/Treasure", has been excluded from this collection.

For Wire fans curious about the band's recent output who don't want to shell out the extra money for both R&B 1 and 2, Send is an efficient, functional compillation. However, it does hint that Wire might be digressing into a familiar pattern of forsaking the entertaining aspects of their approach in favor of deliberate artiness, resulting in less emotionally accessible music.

Who would have thought that the best rock album to come out since The Strokes/The Hives would be from a bunch of guys that have been around the block more than a few times. These guys made classic albums in the seventies - amazingly trippy/mellow albums in the eighties (My first WIRE album was the Ideal Copy - it blew me away), and now these guys put out an absolutely amazing, totally ballsy, beutifully driven album. Although this one merges both of the Read & Burn EPs somewhat - they are still worth getting (Namely, because the two best songs off of Read & Burn 1 are left off). Man, I kind of gave up on these guys through all of the crazy losing letters (WIR) etc. - but holy [guano] - this CD (with the Read & Burns) may be the best thing they have ever done.

The four tracks that do not appear on Read And Burn EPs (Mr. Marx's Table, Being Watched, You Can't Leave Now, and Half Eaten) are all excellent; they take the aggression of Read And Burn and unique musical style and instrumentation.

I think personally they should have not released Send, but instead re-release the first two R&B EPs, so that more people could actually get their hands on a copy, and made the four new songs into another EP. I just feel that these four are a bit overwhelmed by the other material on the album.

I have to admit that Mr. Marx's Table is perhaps the greatest song I have ever listened to.

Wire have managed this again. They are back for a third time and it is even better than the second come-back.