We got the streets suckers – Lucid Dream come out to play

I want The Lucid Dream! I want them alive, if possible. If not, wasted! But I want them. Send the word!

You’re standing right now with delegates from 100 psych bands. And there’s over thousands more. That’s 20,000 hardcore heads. Forty-thousand, counting affiliates, and twenty-thousand more, not organized, some stoned, but generally ready to fight: 60,000 heads and some hipsters! Now, there ain’t but 20,000 police in the whole town. Can you dig it?

Now, here’s the sum total: One gang could run this city! One gang. Nothing would move without us allowing it to happen. We could tax the crime syndicates, the police, because WE got the streets, suckers! Can you dig it? Can you dig it???

The number one gang of the psych scene are the #psychtraitors The Lucid Dream aka the rampant Road warriors of motorik, the Digby’s dick of dub, the Titans of techno and the Tongs of Trance.

All right now, for all you boppers out there in the big city, all you street people with an ear for the action, I’ve been asked to relay a request from the Grammercy Riffs. It’s a special for the Lucid Dream, that real live bunch from Carlisle, and I do mean the Lucid Dream. Here’s a hit with them in mind.

‘Coalescence’ cruises like a hundred NY subway trains, jumping the turnstiles, dressed and ready for action. It sounds like civilisation spaffing it’s pants.

The Lucid Dream, sick of running from these wimps, blast off with ‘CHI-03’ a thrilling reduction of dance music to it’s vital core, and then amplifies minimalism to the max. Say goodbye to those lousy skinhead fucks.

‘Leave Me In The Dark’ is arguably the peak of The Deep End. Everything The Lucid Dream do is one continuous story and roots of past albums come together, the groovy swirling dub, the furious automatic language, the delirious cloud 9 dance. Iconic and for the ages. Dub fucks techno, and techno likes it.

Lucid Dream come out to plaaaa-ay.

‘High and Wild’. Perfect panorama of a long journey that’s half ocean, half fairground. A moment of ripose after the battles, and showing scars of what has passed. A reflection of what was sought and what has been won. A view out into the sea and at home. One eye on the past and one eye on the future. Day by day…

You Lucid Dream are good, real good

The best

https://theluciddream.bandcamp.com/album/the-deep-end

Head to the CONTENTS page for the best in new music!

For John Hall

We won’t lecture you with poetry
We won’t say that love will tear us apart
We won’t mention the new dawn that fades
We won’t talk about regrets
Or the young men with the weight on their shoulders,

Let’s talk about fines times
Let’s talk about live transmissions
Let’s worship pagan idols
Let’s talk about a sense of liberty
To the centre of the city, where all roads meet.

From a train to Liverpool to the edge of the universe, John Hall, a star in his own right…

The Best In Modern Music – Video Playlist Number 2!

Let’s start with “the loudest band in the world”, A Place To Bury Strangers. Don’t believe them? Turn up the volume, turn up your speakers, then later apologise to the neighbours…

‘Keep Slipping Away’ is on Exploding Head and available from Amazon, iTunes etc.

“Flat cap gobshite fucked up again
Left his wife and kids in the rain
He calls out ‘watch out slatterns!’ as he enters the room
With a dried-up cornflake stuck to his chin
The clatter of glass
The rustle of paper
“I’ve come to see a man about a dog” “

vs. Big Electric is available from bandcamp

“I came across a dug hole- stump had turned to dirty coal
Belly’s gone, belly’s gone- The place I wrote my name upon.
I muddied off to see the worms, the coins, the dirt- all had turned skeletal.
They chopped it down.
They cut it’s throat.”

https://ourmaninthebronzeage.bandcamp.com/album/the-gallows-tree

Summer might not last all year, but The Tea Street Band does…

The Tea Street Band is available from Amazon and the usuals…

A sudden change of tone as we find ourselves with Manchester’s best krautrock, prog and folk-horror band, Flange Circus:

https://flangecircus.bandcamp.com/album/abandoned-glow

Now for a band so dedicated to the motorik pulsebeat,  they make Kraftwerk look like Motley Crue, the sensational Warm Digits.

https://warmdigits.bandcamp.com

Right, now we’re all warmed up, let’s finish with a sing song! Here’s Glam Skanks! Have it!

https://glamskanks.bandcamp.com/album/glam-skanks

The Whispering Knights (1977) – DVD Special Edition (2008)

Although overlooked in favour of The Railway Children, The Whispering Knights is a wonderful example of 1970s BBC programming for children – scary and enthralling. The appearance of the eponymous knights at the end of episode 3 remains an iconic moment of television. The plot itself involves Martha, William and Susie who, via magic brew, incur the wrath of witch queen Morgan Le Fey (Jean Marsh) and the mystery of a stone circle.

A special edition was released in 2008 with a better remaster after a 2001 vanilla release looked worse than the VHS.

Here is everything you need to know:

Starring Jean Marsh, Lis Sladen, Colin Jeavons and John Le Mesurier. The child actors disappeared into obscurity, although Eric Pringle, who played William, would appear in some episodes of Bread.

Music was composed by The Heartwood Institute. One of the earliest works by composer Jonathan Sharp, who would eventually go on to collaborate with Hawksmoor on the wonderful Concrete Island soundtrack in 1988 for Alan Clarke (read the review of the Blu-ray release here).

Action by HAVOC.

Effects made with glorious CSO.

Costumes mostly recycled from other shows.

Produced by Barry Letts.

Directed by David Maloney.

Special features include audio commentary, a documentary recounting the same stories as the audio commentary, location now & then comparison (exactly the same) and a text commentary you’ll never read. Plus a contemporary TV new feature with the BBC’s Alastair Fergus. The remastering is excellent though.

Originally released on double pack VHS in 1993 for the exorbitant price of £18.49.

The BBC junked episodes 3 and 5. Luckily episode 3 was discovered in a church vestry in Little Wapping and episode 5 was discovered in Sri Lanka.

Several cuts were made by Australian censors.

Preceded by Basil Brush.

Accompanied with jelly and ice cream.

The Whispering Knights soundtrack is these days available here:

https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/the-whispering-knights

If you’re a fan of this classic BBC show, the 2008 Special Edition DVD goes a fine job of celebrating it, with a good upgrade in picture quality and worthwhile extras.

Head to the CONTENTS to find your favourite new music!

The Best In Modern Music – Video Playlist!

Who better to get this party started than the band of the 21st century, The Lucid Dream?!

Compulsion Songs is available to buy from Amazon and the usuals

The Norse God of the Power Trio, Hey Bulldog kick out one of their finest singles, with one of the coolest videos since the Beastie Boys perfected the art form:

https://heybulldog.bandcamp.com/track/al-lupo

In two minutes, showing why they have more energy than a car boot full of cheap speed and Lucozade, it’s Three Dimensional Tanx:

https://threedimensionaltanx.bandcamp.com/album/three-dimensional-tanx-self-titled-studio-album-2014

God damn The Tapestry for splitting up:

https://thetapestry.bandcamp.com/album/infatuation-look-out

In an alternate, better, reality The Watchmakers would be playing arena’s with their monstrous, party ready psych:

https://the-watchmakers.bandcamp.com/album/stole-from-yesterday-recordings-2013-15

We once described The Maitlands as “half Morrissey, Half JMW Turner” to which Maits guitarist Ste Ackley replied “more like half Morrisons, half JW Lees”.

https://themaitlands1.bandcamp.com/track/flotsam-and-jetsam

From Abergeldie’s to The Abercromby, LoneLady’s music represents the real Manchester…

https://dirtypane.bigcartel.com

Brining us to a close, our of our fave psych songs from one of our fave psych albums, with one of our fave vids, it’s Lumerians and the stunning ‘Atlanta Brook’:

https://lumerians.bandcamp.com/album/transmalinnia

Communications Across Time: The Remainderer by The Fall

MES first introduced us to the concept of time locks way back on ‘Wings’. On The Remainderer, he travels backwards and forwards along his timeline, and along the timelime of The Fall, in order to associate and interrogate the multitude of MES’ and The Falls that there have been.

The time travelling hi-jinks kick off with title track ‘The Remainderer’, and it’s double drum, percussion heavy sound takes us back to the days of Hanley and Burns. The Fall always were at their best with two drummers and this shows that whether the decade is the 80s, the 90s or the 10’s, this is a sound that fits The Fall like a glove. Here the song has the percussive beat of a wardrobe with a gorilla shoved inside, bouncing around the hold of a ship in the middle of a frothy Mediterranean storm. Meanwhile MES’ vocals contrast the 80s throwback-ness with his growly vocals that place the song purely in the 10’s. But on say, Ersatz GB, where the hawking phlegm voice seemed like a poor attempt to wallpaper over the cracks that they’d entered the studio without enough songs to go around and he’d entered without enough lyrics, here, instead, the double tracking and layering/layering/layering of vocals makes the delivery seem more like a deliberate attempt at experimentalism as opposed to laziness, using his vocal techniques as a musical instrument. And as he uses different strengths of growling and Captain Beefheart-ing, it sounds like different MES’ are coming together, like a Doctor Who special. The most notable of these discussions is when one MES opines: “it was a good day” only for another MES to retort: “whatever that is”.

‘Mister Rode’ features a starring role from a previous MES. It’s shocking in context to hear the ‘chorus’ “I gotta name, I gotta face  /say ” so clearly enunciated. It’s a stark reminder that he can let us hear the words if he wants to, it’s just that he doesn’t. As such it feels like the MES from The Unutterable has turned up for this song, from prime drinking-and-firing phase.

“He smothers his own, his own tomorrow” says MES in ‘Remembrance R’, providing a pithy epithet both for himself and his attitude towards his bands’ flirtation with lime lights. The song itself is a throwback to Reformation Post TLC, and his general ire at reunion acts, if anything it shows that when RPTLC came out it was the thin end of the wedge and he didn’t know how lucky he was. When Ding’s spoken word vocal comes in it’s like when Mike Bennett or Ed Blaney would do a bit. Meanwhile at the start the whole “canajetta” business takes us forward to the evolutionary dead end of the growling, being so close to parody it must be deliberate.

It’s our turn to travel through a time lock when a message in a bottle washes up from the 1990’s, a indistinct fragment of an undistinguished run through of Gene Vincent’s ‘Say Mama’. And did you notice the current MES warning of us about Remembrance R dubbed underneath? A slurry of noise hits us and we pass through a time lock into the present where the current band is doing an equally in distinguished run through of Gene Vincent’s ‘Race With The Devil’. Hanley becomes Spurr, Bramah and Scanlon become Greenway. The fact that these are fairly mediocre run throughs of Gene Vincent songs aside, the importance is the interaction with the past, the acknowledgment that somewhere is time there is another Fall with other band members. On all the other Fall albums, we’d get just the modern crappy version, but by cut and shutting it with the old crappy version what matters is the effort to try something new, to play with our perceptions of time and to bear witness to the changing nature of The Fall and MES. Like a time lapse of a flower opening, this is a decade long time lapse of the band. Things change, the young become old and everything has it’s time.

And then the reveal, then the grim punchline. On ‘Touchy Pad’ Tasmin Middleton screeches “where’s my time machine?” I’ll tell you where it is, Marky’s got it! And then when he talks of “the tentacles of the old ones” he could practically be talking about himself.

And so nearing the end of his span, MES acknowledges his other selfs and engages with them, admits that your former guises and lives are as equally valid as the one you inhabit now and the ones you will inhabit in the future. Then, having made peace with himselves, all that is left is… the remainderer.

“Pissing by the side of the M45”: check out The Maitlands’ ‘Dissatisfied’.

Kings of discipline: check out the album National Service by Total Victory

For more on The Remainderer the excellent You Must Get Them All has this to say, and agrees about the self parody-ing “hhhhhheeee caaaannnnnnn’tttttttt”

The Essential Songs of 2015…

Let’s cut to the quick, here are 9 songs that colourhorizon would like to draw you attention to. Songs to love, songs to embrace, songs to enjoy for years to come.

With the exception of the couple of late entries, the songs are here based on how many times they have been played. These songs have been hammered and that is the ultimate acid test of any song.

Let’s get started in no particular order, but first name on the team sheet is always…

The Lucid Dream – ‘Unchained Dub’

‘Unchained Dub’ reigns at the centre of the Lucid Dream’s second, eponymous album like a black hole, so dense and heavy it will suck the energy from the other albums in your music collection (bad luck for Lumerians). The Carlisle shoegaze band used this album to expand into motorik and dub, to startling effect. A raging shit storm is conjured up by Mark’s wizard weapon: the dub siren. Whirring, wailing, oscillating and spewing bad karma; it throws up energy, throws down for a fight and kicks out the mother fuckin’ jams. On top of which you have the baddest and most coolest of all instruments: the melodica. Dub siren and melodica? That’s some righteous shit.

Click to watch ‘Unchained Dub’ live at the 2014 Liverpool Psych Fest 26/08/2014.

Click to watch ‘Unchained Dub’ live at the Roadhouse 14/02/2015.

Mugstar & Damo Suzuki – ‘Zero Coda’

A combination to die for as the Liverpool space-rock overlords teamed up with the legendary CAN frontman for a monstrous album, Start From Zero. ‘Zero Coda’ bought the record to an end with sharp edges and frisky beats all the way. Mugstar’s strength is bringing giddy abandon to their music and this encapsulates that perfectly, the music here is as joyous as eating jelly on a bouncy castle. This moulds Damo’s words into an effervescent, fevered day-dream. Wonderfully, his delivery reaches ‘Halleluhwah’ levels of transcendence. By the way, ‘Zero Coda’ goes on for 22 minutes, so yes, the spirit of CAN is alive and well… Travelling deeper and deeper into this epic, the music flows and punches sharper and harder with Damo becoming increasingly possessed and hypnotic. An emblem of enraptured; his shamanic delivery elevates the music further. Together they build a psych feedback loop.

Click to listen.

New Order – ‘Tutti Frutti’

The Manchester legends returned this year to prove that class really is permanent. ‘Tutti Frutti’ may have a cringeworthy name but is a huge, acid-tinged tribute to Technique, with similar vocal samples as ‘Fine Time’. It’s sweat soaked and filthy as fuck. What’s clear is that Barney has clearly not lost the uncanny knack of writing an earworm-ing chorus. Here he’s verbally sparring with La Roux in a frothy back-and-forth that just keeps on giving until we’re left with the gravelly Italian robo-soul utterance of the title. It’s up there with the best…

Click to listen

Sleaford Mods – ‘Tarantula Deadly Cargo’

Zeitgeist agitators Sleaford Mods are let’s face it, pretty big at the moment, surrounded by buzz like grease covers the contents of a KFC Mighty Bucket for One. Vocalist Jason Williamson is simply the most magnetic spleen-ventor this country has spat out in decades. He may not want the comparison, but he is Rotten and Strummer for a new generation and a new set of problems. Every quip, every swear word, every barb at inane culture is a slap in the face of every right-on bearded hipster gobshite and every Daily Mail reading, tennis watching, dead-from-the-neck-up vermin. Like it or not these songs are born from the same lineage as ‘Anarchy in the UK’, ‘Beasley Street’ and ‘Bingo-Master’s Breakout’.

Lead single ‘Tarantula Deadly Cargo’ is damn near melodic and even closer to playfully whimsical. It’s as accessible as they will probably ever get in their own rough diamond way, with repeated phrases concerning “European poo’s” taking the place of 3 minutes of bile.

Click to watch the video, you can dance to it, sing along to it and it features ice cream.

Cantaloupe – ‘Indigo’

‘Indigo’ is where the party starts on Cantaloupe’s debut album Zoetrope. A crisp, resolute drum beats snaps the listener into action and all of a sudden it’s time to dance. ‘Indigo’ has a Daft Punk quality but also has the feel of an 80s electronic rap crossover (not that I want to suggest that Cantaloupe are the Rock Steady Crew). The verses are brilliant pieces of poetry, take this passage of imagery combining the urban, the dystopian, corruption , destruction, reality, dissolution…

Hold that pose like a video skipping
We can play it back ’til the tape starts ripping
Animal skin and a silicon heart
Waking while we’re dreaming while we’re crumbling apart

We made some money and we paid the rent
Bonuses were booming but the business was bent
A purple city sitting pretty in the night
Shining back in your eyes

Then comes one of the pivotal moments of the album, a killer, hands in the air chorus and enough energy to make concrete fizz:

How am I ever going to let her go?
My indigo
How am I ever going to let her go?

Now, this chorus doesn’t look much written down but Tom A.D.’s vocals turn the this simple mantra into a masterpiece of sing along songwriting, the essence of brilliant pop music. The interesting thing is the line ‘How am I ever going to let her go?’ doesn’t quite fit, meaning that Tom has to slightly rush the line. However this gives the chorus a jolting, punkish air of discord. Oh and the bass is funky as hell.

Click to watch the video

Klusters – ‘Shall We Remember’

Klusters are a Hungarian electronic duo, whose debut album, Olbers’ Paradox is, to quote their snazzy website, “a concept album based on questions about the connection between the self and its subconsciousness, dreams, love and destiny”.

Veering from the brooding to the anthemic, Klusters album Olbers’ Paradox has much to appeal to fans of all things electro. ‘Shall We Remember’ comes at the end of the laid back middle section of the album with floating, mourning guitars until a slow, intense rhythm kicks in. After enjoying a warm, soup-like atmosphere, we really hit top gear at around 6 minutes. It’s worth the wait, with a killer chorus, stark piano and urgent electronics combining to make a thumping dance smash. This final passage at just 3 minutes though, feels way too short, Klusters could have kept this party going for a lot longer. An exquisite moment of release…

Click to listen

Radar Men From The Moon – Deconstruction’

What is immediately striking about ‘Deconstruction’ is just how crisp, immediate and energetic the drums are. This is bold new territory for the Radar Men, moving away from the huge slabs of riffs of their first album and the abstract cut out shapes of their last album, Strange Wave Galore. With a bold side-stepping of the necessity to paint huge swathes of stately noise, Radar Men are forcing through with an energising space-dance. The whole thing flexes and glides like a stingray. Throbs of sound flare while quicksilver guitar shoots lightning bolts. ‘Deconstruction’ shines the light on a new direction for the band, one that will get people dancing.

Click to listen

Teeth Of The Sea – ‘Field Punishment’

Teeth Of The Sea are a multi limbed monster that spans the great divide of post-rock, noise-rock, ambient, prog, space rock and fuck-knows. Hell, when I caught their blistering set at the 2013 Liverpool Psych fest they turned the place into a fuckin’ rave.

Their 2013 album Master was widely regarded as a superlative, flawless record by, well everyone really. Even my boss likes it and he listens to Clapton. Late 2015 the much awaited follow-up, Highly Deadly Black Tarantula arrived.

‘Field Punishment’ sheds narrow electronica; Blade Runner and Fad Gadget. Surgical tools glisten. The bass gets funky, we’re not a million from Chemical Brothers, believe it or not. Keys drop in and out; digital heaven. Strap in folks, it’s time to dance as the ingredients are welded together to make a brutalist rave epic. A hypnotic, digital, subdural amalgamation of everything you need to have a fine time. Proof of this songs’ glory? At 6 minutes, this is way too short. They could crank this out for 30 minutes and keep everyone happy…

Click to listen

The Tapestry – ‘We Talk’

Welcome to the sound of summer 2016. Say hello to The Tapestry, a stylish girl-boy disco wrecking combo. They reign with whacking great terrace singalongs; perfect for both afternoon radio play and late night partying. This is a pop band for an era which has forgotten what pop music could be.

Their new single is ‘We Talk’ which takes their trademark herky-jerky angular grooves and welds it to another prime selection from their big box of chorus’. Once again The Tapestry mostly recall The Fire Engines (if that fine Scottish band had got their shit together). The drums are skin-tight, the bass gets under your skin and the guitar a dazzling, fizzing power line. A dizzying blockbuster.

It’s married with a perfect video that showcases both band and song. Manchester’s next biggest band? See for yourself.

So, there we have at it. 9 songs which colourhorizon hopes will brighten up your days.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.

Butcher “Just In It For The Shouting”

Butcher John Redmond today admitted what he loves most about his profession is the shouting.

The highlight of his day is, while serving someone with Cumberland sausages, to turn his head to one side and bellow an announcement about gammon shanks.

He said: “I love the shouting, it’s what get’s me out of bed. There’s a real skill to it; it helps to add a suggestion of a cockney accent. It’s what people expect from a loud-mouth food seller”

John used to sell meat from a large van in provincial Northern towns but now works in an indoor butchers in a shopping centre. He is adamant the technique is still as relevant as it ever was: “some people may claim that people shopping in HMV and Next aren’t going to be tempted to buy a full chicken on impulse. They’re wrong, I can bark them into believing it’s exactly what they left the house for”

“I also get a jaunty hat”.

Kanye West to star in Mrs Brown’s Boys

It has been revealed that racoon-ish twat-bag Kanye West will feature in a ‘festive’ edition of Mrs Brown’s Boys.

The perplexingly popular egomaniacal dipshit and karaoke fluffer will appear in a specially scribbled episode in front of a (technically) live studio audience. The details of the ‘story’ are being kept under wraps but an insider has revealed that Kanye will be playing ‘an enormous cock-end’.

A showbiz bollocks-for-brains at the BBC gurgled, “This is going to be awesome. We may even make commemorative selfie sticks to make it even more bitingly relevant”.

Mrs Brow’s Boys fan and general cretin Jason Longpoke squealed ‘This is everything I could ever want from life and more. I thought they could never top the antics of a man dressed as woman with an Irish accent but this is a whole new level in banter’.

“Opera in the age of fragmentation”…Wire’s Red Barked Tree (2010)

Within a bile flecked album of discontent, Wire plant the seeds of hope and look for the victory of common sense. Fighting with sharp words and sharper guitars, Red Barked Tree sees Wire fighting hard.

Wire do need better publicity though. Sure, their initial trio of groundbreaking post punk albums (Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154) are hailed, correctly, as iconic, but since their reunion their career has been so low-key that Sherlock Holmes could overlook it.

So, in 2010, when Wire released the brilliant Red Barked Tree, it received positive plaudits, but not the kind of attention that should befit a game changing band releasing an album that could possibly be their best.

The line “Opera in the age of fragmentation” sums up Red Barked Tree. Overcrowding, decay, ecological disaster, bureaucracy, stupidity and alienation are just some of the issues here. It’s not a downer though, as the songs are performed with such brio, verve and fervour. There may be discontent, but’s an anger mixed with style, wordplay and immaculate hooks. The album is chock-a-block with tantalising songs from start to finish.

‘Please Take’ heralds the album with what could be the catchiest, funniest Wire song in their repertoire. As soon as it starts you know Wire have hit pay dirt with a casual gait and jaunty guitars. I won’t spoil the chorus for those who haven’t heard it, but it’s one of the best you’ll ever hear. When the song dissolves the band kick it back into gear again, offering said chorus for a grateful listener.

I won’t hear another word
Another sugared lie
I won’t be a part of your
Latest alibi, so,
Please take your knife
Out of my back
And when you do
Please don’t twist it…

‘Now Was’ continues the pace with a high energy shimmer bemoaning look-back-bores (see The Fall’s The Infotainment Scan for an album of such anti nostalgia vitriol) with the bad pun but great sentiment of “You’re the wizard of was”.

‘Adapt’ starts with a riff surprisingly close to ‘Wonderwall’ (go check if you don’t believe me) but is in fact a slowly spun, bubbling, resigned ballad, dispensing advice for the apocalypse such as “Adapt Chekhov to family crest”.

‘Two Minutes’ is a rampage of anger and pummeling mechanical guitars (check out Nnon by The Woken Trees for a band influenced by this kind of punishing post punk) and everything you need to know is summed up with the lyrics: “A dirty cartoon duck covers the village in shit / possibly signalling the end of western civilisation”.

‘Clay’ has a lolloping start but builds into a rising bubbling swell. ‘Bad Worn Thing’ features more brilliant wordplay “Jam sandwich filled with Uzied peelers” and bemoans the “overcrowded nature of things”. ‘Moreover’ has a machine gun delivery of problems and solutions.

‘A Flat Ten’ (not ‘A Flat Tent’ as one lyrics website has it) has a furious, but controlled velocity with Colin Newman’s delivery an immaculate display of wordcraft and delivery.

‘Smash’ has a terrifying salvo of guitars and an almost power pop immediacy (incidentally, the drums provide a crisp, neurotic backbone throughout the album). ‘Down To This’ is an ominous tale; lamenting dissolution.

Finally, ‘Red Barked Trees’ closes the album with intense acoustic strumming backed by bouncing, skittering bass thst grows in stature to a grandstand climax. The repeated “To find the healing red barked trees” offers hope in suggesting a cure for all the problems that have been outlaid over the course of the album.

Red Barked Tree is untethered from Wire’s back catalogue to a degree that Mark E Smith would find impressive. It’s almost as if their history itself does not exist. This is unmistakably a Wire album but the band sounds so fresh, so vital, so urgent that this could easily be mistaken for a debut album by a young band wearing jeans too tight for them. You wonder if it would have been worth putting a different name to this, to stop reviewers reaching for their copies of Pink Flag. The bottom line is, however, this is an excellent album regardless of Wire’s heritage and influence. Intelligent, passionate and immaculately constructed, this is a dazzling album.