Wire at sub89 Reading 15th March 2017


First up was support act Captivves, a Reading three-piece featuring drums, bass and guitar. From the outset the guitar player set a tone of dark foreboding with sheets of steely noise: the bassist is also the singer and his angst-filled vocals had the perfect setting against this backdrop. A beautifully consuming sound to get lost in.  Captivves have a couple of EPs up on Soundcloud that are well worth a listen: Captivves on Souncloud. 
The venue started filling out ahead of the arrival of the main attraction, though if you were there early you did see Colin Newman setting up his equipment before the band came on stage for their set.   Whatever happened to roadies?

Wire took to the stage and got straight into 'Boiling Boy' from ' A Bell is a Cup' one of the few numbers dating back to Wire mark 1.  This year is Wire's 40th anniversary but - as is customary with them - they did not choose to do a greatest hits set, rather a set almost totally compiled from the more recent Wire mark 2 albums and heavily biased towards their, still to be released, 15th album 'Silver/Lead' due on the last day of this month. The one nod to their post-punk origins was 'Three Girl Rhumba' which, let's face it, is not probably the first track from 'Pink Flag' that most people would think of, if asked to name their favourites.

According to setlist their full set list in performance order was:


Track
Album
Boiling Boy
A Bell Is A Cup
Art Of Persistence
The Third Day
Diamonds In Cups
Silver / Lead
Three Girl Rhumba
Pink Flag
Small Black Reptile
Manscape
An Alibi
Silver / Lead
Red Barked Trees
Red Barked Tree
This Time
Silver / Lead
Brio
Silver / Lead
Playing Harp for the Fishes
Silver / Lead
Silver/Lead
Silver / Lead
Underwater Experiences
Stray EP and/or Document
Keep Exhaling
Change Becomes Us
Split Your Ends
Wire
Short Elevated Period
Silver / Lead
Over Theirs
The Ideal Copy
Encore
Ahead
The Ideal Copy
Stealth of a Stork
Change Becomes Us

According to a contributor to the Wire discussion group, Pink Flag, the two tracks in italics above were not in their set, but I am pretty certain that 'Split Your Ends' at least was played.

The seven tracks from the new album were delivered with intensity and there was an almost 'krautrock' like interplay between Graham Lewis's bass, Colin Newman's rhythm guitar and Matthew Simm's lead guitar - it was certainly hypnotic at times.

In spite of hardly recognising any of the songs, it was a good set and great to see Wire still performing.  Graham Lewis still looks like one of the hard men from an episode of 1970's police drama 'The Sweeney' though between songs when exchanging words with Colin and Robert he was seen to smile; Robert Grey's drumming was muscular and - especially on the faster numbers - unwavering even when it got to the 130 bpm songs.

Here's as much of their setlist as you can hear from YouTube:


And here's what Spotify has to offer, but in a different order:




If I get the chance to see Wire again, I'll definitely take it!

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