Wire - Pink Flag

In most circles, Wire is considered one of the original art-punk bands. Their style matched up with the punk aesthetic: minimal musical experience and a penchant for short, direct songs. But while the punk movement is generally credited with trying to distill rock music down to its essential elements, Wire came from a more extreme angle.

Rather than starting with bombastic '70s rock and tearing it down, Wire started with the most basic elements of music and built musical structures without antecedent. They approached making music like art students building primitive sculptures with guitar and drum sounds instead of toothpicks and glue. As their career progressed, the band moved on to making more and more elaborate sculptures, but in the beginning, there was Pink Flag: 21 songs in under 36 minutes. Raw, varied and uncompromising, it stands as one of the more powerful debut albums of the '70s.

The record's spread can make it hard to sum up. There is no unified statement made, merely a collection of concepts that is impressive for its sheer weight. Though the punk era was one of grand statements that made people re-think what rock and roll was about, Wire does that here simply by playing its heart out. It can be abrasive, but Pink Flag's density and widely varied smorgasbord of musical ideas make it a landmark album. (Year of Release: 1977)

Track List:
1. Reuters Listen
2. Field Day For The Sundays
3. Three Girl Rhumba
4. Ex Lion Tamer
5. Lowdown Listen
6. Start To Move
7. Brazil
8. It's So Obvious
9. Surgeon's Girl
10. Pink Flag
11. The Commercial
12. Straight Line
13. 106 Beats That
14. Mr. Suit
15. Strange
16. Fragile
17. Mannequin
18. Different To Me
19. Champs Listen
20. Feeling Called Love
21. 1 2 X U
22. Options R [*]

[*] - Re-Issue Bonus Track

Download: Wire - Pink Flag (54.9MB)