WIRE have shared new tracks from their new album, Mind Hive, which will be released on January 24th via the band’s own label pinkflag (pre-order); MusicTAP is pleased to present to you “Primed & Ready”.
The band’s seventeenth studio album sees the definitive post-punk group continue a run of stellar releases, showcasing a band on peak form, 40 years into their hugely influential career.
“The lyric/text for this song could be read as a series of questions, set in 2017,” comments the band’s Graham Lewis. “Who could have known the answers would be, in no particular order…Liverpool FC, me, Boris the Spider, 67, Lieutenant Colonel.”
Colin Newman adds, “Primed & Ready” was the easiest song to write on the album, written in less time than it takes to play it. There’s nothing remotely “clever” about the chord sequence / structure and there’s only three chords, 2 in the verse & 1 in the chorus. As in all things Wire “less is more”.
Wire’s seventeenth studio album sees the definitive post-punk group continue a run of stellar releases, showcasing a band on peak form 40 years into their hugely influential career.
Since their inception Wire have maintained a reputation for creating music that stretches the rock form whilst simultaneously editing it down to its essence. Mind Hive is the group’s first newly recorded material since 2017’s stellar Silver/Lead. That album garnered rave reviews and career best sales. Yet, if Silver/Lead set the bar pretty high, Mind Hive seems to have no problem vaulting over it – a supremely confident album featuring some of the band’s most upbeat moments of recent years.
Wire’s back catalogue is, of course, studded with influential epoch-defining works. Last year saw the reissue of their ground-breaking first three albums: Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154. Now Mind Hive arrives at a time when Wire are being cited as an influence by yet another generation of bands. They are also the subjects of a career spanning feature documentary called People in a Film due for release late 2020 (details here).
How a group that has been operating for such a long period and is still able to produce such exciting and essential work is difficult to understand. And yet here we are; Mind Hive is the most masterful 35 minutes of post-punk you will hear this year.
Mind Hive will be available on Friday, January 24th, 2020.