WIRE

10.20

AEvergreen art-punkers reboot their old outliers.

lready their second release this year – January’s Mind Hive was rapturously received – Wire’s 10.20 is a collection of odds, sods, offcuts and refashionings which impress in sustained patches. Most of this remains in close contact with the short, sharp, staccato shock the band are famed for, but with the bookend tracks lasting more than six and eight minutes, there’s more here than a glib cartoon of the cult legend that is Wire. These eight “strays” (their description) divide into two halves. First there are four pieces recorded in 2010: new interpretations of 80s numbers

Boiling Boy and German Shepherds, the later He Knows and Chairs Missing out-takes from Underwater Experiences. They all sound razor-sharp, the guitars pulling off that patented trick of racing breakneck without ever stumbling from their path of purity. The second half offers more recent salvage jobs on lost or neglected songs. Small Black Reptile was arch electronica when it appeared on 1990’s Manscape; now it’s guitar-led, near-psychedelic rock. Over Theirs (sic) becomes a long, lumbering blast of the sinister and ominous. Completists will swoon at 10.20. Newcomers will be intrigued.