Olde farts are not supposed to make music like this. This is the third go-round for Wire, the premier art punk band. They broke up at the end of the seventies, reformed in the eighties for a series of albums of variable quality and finally petered out again. Now in the twenty first century, Wire is here for the third time. How do they sound?
Pissed off and absolutely vicious.

“Send” is made up of six cuts previously released on the two “Read & Burn” EPs plus five more. The collection is relentless in its harshness and propulsion, ie-it rocks without pause. Kicking off with the stop-start structure of “The Art of Stopping” (about their oft-interrupted career, perhaps), “Send” will remind old fans of the classics “Pink Flag” and “Chairs Missing” with more modern guitar and percussion textures. Wire seems determined to not repeat the mistakes of their eighties reformation. They also go beyond merely repeating their early triumphs: this is a modern-sounding album with occasionally techno-ish touches especially in the drum sounds.

Colin Newman’s vocals are, as usual, rather mystrious and even impenetrable. On the bass-heavy “Mr. Marx’s Table”, he sings with near-sweetness “You’ve come such a long way for such a short stay” as the backing track falls away, leaving his words suspended in the mix. What is the song about? Fuck if I can tell, but it sure sounds great. Even when the album’s pace slows a bit, on tracks “You Can’t Leave Now” and “Being Watched” (a track about a confused voyeur who wants “to be watched and be the watcher too”) it sounds sinister. In fact the whole thing sounds rather malevolent, which leads me to the following story…

There are some cretins that hang out under the window of my apartment playing lame pop music on their radio at least two or three times a week. When I heard the new “techno” Jewel single, I decided to blast “Send” as loud as my sizable stereo will allow.Since that time, they’ve moved to the other side of the parking lot (they haven’t been back in three weeks!). Another benefit of Wire’s “Send”: PEST REMOVAL!