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Album reviews Music

Wire – Red Barked Tree

Rating: NNNN


Since the late 1970s, English rock band Wire have demonstrated a cheeky straightforwardness in dismantling rock ‘n’ roll conventions. Red Barked Tree, the band’s 12th studio album, feels like a career summation. Recorded, like their last album, without guitarist Bruce Gilbert, it contains many other ingredients that will sound familiar to long-time fans, namely an emphasis on erudite, sometimes snotty lyrics and big, heavy riffs.

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The most classic-sounding Wire moment comes in the snarling Two Minutes and its numeric nod to punk brevity. Songs like Moreover, Bad Worn Thing and Smash keep this bratty attitude alive in between more pensive tracks like Adapt and Clay, which unwind at a deliberate, even pleasantly languid, pace. However, the album slips into a coma in its final 10 minutes during two melancholic soundscapes, the kind of self-indulgent, aimless atmospherics the preceding nine songs would scorn.

Top track: Moreover

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