album // Red Barked Tree
Red Barked Tree is the third album from
the third coming of Wire, their second post-Bruce
Gilbert, their twelfth album overall (including the Wir
album) and the first to be named completely after a song on the
album. As a trio of Colin Newman, Graham
Lewis and Robert Grey (nee Gotobed),
without the stalwart Gilbert, and even after the success of Object
47, there is a vague concern that the album will be destabilised,
not have enough inventiveness or lack the sonic punch which came
through loud and aggressively on Send. 'Two Minutes', with
its distorted spoken, expletive-riddled vocal from Newman (offset
by low urges from Lewis) and urgent, distorted motorik groove is
as close as Red Barked Tree gets to the white heat of Send.
Listening to the opener, 'Please Take', with its
154-era gentle guitars and Lewis's chorus of 'Please
take your knife out of my back / And when you do please don't twist
it / Fuck off out of my face', you realise it may not be the
studied anger of Send, but a return to the wry, arch Wire
of old. Reference points to old Wire inevitably feed through, making
Red Barked Tree perhaps the only Wire album so far to draw
together the punk and post-punk of their Seventies trilogy of albums
and their Eighties body of work for Mute. 'Clay',
with its slow build, lurking bassline and guitar scratches, could
be an 'I Am The Fly' for 2011 until it opens out into a carefully
steady instrumental middle section. 'Moreover' borrows the main
guitar riff from 'A Question Of Degree' and brings the whole thing
back up to date; or back to history; whatever, it's my favourite
track on the album - loud and slick, with lots of Colin Newman's
trademark, near-cynical vocals.
Elsewhere things are distinctly different. 'Red
Barked Trees', for example is a gentle, mysterious piece making
use of a waltzy rhythm and almost folky guitars; 'Adapt' has a maudlin
sound, almost like a Morrissey ballad, with waves of backward guitar
and piano sounds, to making this sound like nothing else Wire have
recorded to date. The expansive 'Down To This', despite its chugging
bassline, similarly sounds pleasantly out of character, much more
Githead than Wire.
On the verses, the fast 'Now Was' has a sound not
dissimilar to what a more 'together' Libertines may have sounded
like, though the lyrics are much darker. 'Bad Worn Thing', sung
by Lewis, starts with the words 'Jam sandwich' which had
my eldest daughter and I in stitches the first time we heard it;
a few more lines of deft unexpected word combinations and you realise
it's Lewis showcasing the 'cut-up' style of oblique philosophising
which made Wire songs like 'A Seriousness Of Snakes' so weirdly
affecting. Plus 'Bad Worn Thing' namechecks my favourite brand of
vodka, and that's never a bad (worn) thing.
The back-to-back coupling of 'A Flat Tent' and 'Smash'
are reminders of Wire's urgent Seventies Pink Flag origins.
Both are propelled on fuzzed-up guitars, steady drums and bass interplays,
'A Flat Tent' coming with a mad handclap breakdown while 'Smash'
finds respite from its thudding groove in a pleasant piece of controlled
feedback.
Initial versions of the album came with an exclusive
EP, Strays, featuring additional guitar from Matt
Simms and Margaret Fiedler McGinnis, approximating
the band's current live line up on record. The EP kicks off with
the grinding epic 'Boiling Boy', still my favourite of the band's
songs after all this time, the long intro and middle section taking
on a new momentum with the additional musicians. The inimitable
'German Shepherds' takes on a poppier sound and Newman's singing
becomes more euphoric, the chorus taking on an unexpected drama
all of its own.
'He Knows' I don't know, but it's a slow building
piece that feels like it's heading toward something but never quite
reaches it. Nothing wrong with that, and Lewis's vocal at the end
is a thing to hear. 'Underwater Experiences', which I only have
as a sparse, reverb-filled demo from 14 May 1977 on Behind The
Curtain is here bludgeoned into abrupt submission, not a trace
of its sonic depth, just pure accelerated Suicide-esque
noise and over-amped thrills.
I've listened to Red Barked Tree over and
over since the Jiffy bag from Pink Flag arrived
on my doorstep. I know we're only three weeks into 2011 and it seems
premature to say this, but I'd say it could be my album of the year.
cd/dl:
1. Please Take
2. Now Was
3. Adapt
4. Two Minutes
5. Clay
6. Bad Worn Thing
7. Moreover
8. A Flat Tent
9. Smash
10. Down To This
11. Red Barked Trees
bonus EP - Strays
1. Boiling Boy
2. German Shepherds
3. He Knows
4. Underwater Experiences
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