In my younger and more vulnerable years, I ventured to catch Wire headlining a small tent at a boutique festival. Only being familiar with their first three classic records, I was fairly confident I was going to be treated to a ‘best of’ set typical of a band that’s been going for as long as they have. What I got was something else entirely. There was no ‘Three Girl Rhumba’, no ‘I am the Fly’. They threw me a bone by playing ‘Map Ref 41 N 93 W’ but apart from that I was left totally benighted. This isn’t a band that’s still going to cash in on former glory. In reality Wire have a remained a creative force to be reckoned with for their five decades of existence, constantly exploring and pushing boundaries. The difference between them and other groups is that Wire have never really broken up, so there’s never been an opportunity for nostalgia to accumulate. Last year’s self titled album however, was exactly how you might expect a Wire album to sound but with some of the sharper edges sawn off. Nocturnal Koreans on the other hand is more of a studio creation (some of which was recorded at Brighton Electric studio) and has one of the last things you would expect from Wire of old, that it actually has warmth to it.

They haven’t entirely rejected their past, still maintaining a relationship with it that isn’t passive, so that they can go about reshaping it to fit more comfortably into their current form. Their 2013 album saw them returning to songs that date back to the period just after their third album 154 and never made it passed touring. They then went about rewriting them to create the excellent Change Becomes Us, a Wire album that somehow manages to exist in every period of their period simultaneously.

Comparisons to the band’s seminal first three albums are inevitable but Wire don’t try to ignore them, they simply want to have a say in the conversation as well. They retain their aversion to length that’s there right at the beginning on Pink Flag. But while Pink Flag dealt in sprawling vignettes – glimpses of what could be fully formed pop songs – the band quickly get bored and move on to the next one, sometimes not even sticking around long enough to wait for the chorus to repeat. In contrast Nocturnal Koreans follows each song through to their natural conclusion but instead opts to keep the track listing to a snappy eight songs. Their debut almost predicted the robotic assemblage of music in the 21st century, songs reduced to visual blocks of audio on a computer screen to be re assembled however you might wish. Here – and on last year’s album – Wire have actually developed a bit more of a human touch. While in their early work the monotone of Colin Newman’s voice could be something of a barrier, almost a conscious attempt to cover up how catchy the band is capable of being. Here Newman’s bark in early Wire has been replaced by softly humming vocals. On ‘Deadweight’ he lets out “Glide like butterflies” in one long breath and the song feels like it is lifting off the ground. His voice is subtly processed throughout, creating a milder version of the ‘crying robot’ vocoder effect. Still, nothing is laid out for you and repeated listens are still necessary in order for their songs to fully reveal themselves to you.

‘Numbered’ makes sly nods to ‘Three Girl Rhumba’ from 1977’s Pink Flag. The cryptic instruction to “Think of a number” becomes the more defensive “You think I’m a number” perhaps in defiance of the assumption their age may have hindered their creativity in any way. It very much sounds like how you would expect a Wire tune to sound – brittle, sparse guitars and monotone vocals – to the point were it verges on self-parody.

The songs that feel more loose and trippy are the album’s best moments. ‘Forward Position’ tackles the concept of being unable to forgive from an almost futurist angle: “I’m a black box, I remember / every promise that you broke”. Framing a nameless, strained relationship in a post-human, almost Ballardian light. The instrumentation, softly swelling synths and delayed guitars is strikingly shapeless when you consider the music they’re most well known for has the rigidity of building blocks. The title track describes sleepless nights spent touring America and in its best moments, the album captures the hazy and indistinct world that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness. ‘Internal Exile’ even sees them working a brass section into their sound, but again instead of stabbing blasts of noise they pulse with ambient atmosphere.

Nocturnal Koreans finds Wire moving forward but also too often glancing back to the past. But for a band into its fourth decade, Nocturnal Koreans shows a version of Wire still wanting to push the parameters of their sound in ways that bands less than half their age are willing to.
Louis Ormesher

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