Top 100 Albums of the 1970s - #85 - Wire - 154 (1979)

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but if that's the case then I would argue that boredom is its father. The genre of post-punk is proof of this. Punk emerged in the mid-1970s as a reaction against the pretense and excessive of progressive rock, but it only took a few years for the best punk bands to get restless with the aggressive simplicity of the genre, and began to experiment. Thus, post-punk was born, and few bands made the transition more rapidly and completely than Wire.

154 is the third and last Wire album before the band broke up. It represents the end of a three year journey that no one would have been able to predict the end of. Stripped down guitar rock has been replaced by cold and icy textures, with once reviled keyboards appearing prominently, wrapped around surprisingly tuneful melodies.

What's most remarkable here is the atmosphere. The dark and gloomy nature of this record sounds like a more intelligent version of Echo and the Bunnymen, as well as a precursor to goth rock (Bauhaus' debut single, Bela Lugosi's Dead, was released the same year, marking the official launch of the genre in many people's minds.)

The songs on 154 are unabashedly experimental. Rather than being build up around basic chord progressions or melodies, many start with little more than an angular chunk of sound, created on guitars or synthesizers, and the rest of the structure emerges around that one piece. For example, The Other Window rests on a bed of trembling guitar flange, with the lyrics delivered spoken word style on top of it. Indirect Enquiries is built on a two-note riff backed by a crunchy, percussive guitar effect.

At times, the band is even willing to abandon conventional song titles, with the first single from the album bafflingly called "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W".  I looked it up; apparently its in Iowa, although you'd never guess it from the cryptic lyrics. The tune is pretty good, though, and one thing I admire about Wire is that they don't sacrifice melody, as so many other bands do, even when they are stretching the genre to its breaking point.

Sometimes these experiments play out in a couple of minutes, and sometimes they are given more space to breathe. A great example of the latter, and the highlight of the album, is the nearly seven minute A Touching Display. Beginning with a clean, Morricone-esque riff, the song soon descends into somber waves of droning guitar distortion, almost abandoning form altogether in favor of raw sound. I don't doubt that this track must have been influential to later drone-metal and post-metal bands like Earth, Sunn O))), or Melvins. It's a thrilling willingness to throw musical convention completely out the window.

It's a shame Wire broke up when they did; given their trajectory over their three albums, there's no telling what would have come next. Just like post-punk contemporaries Joy Division, the band was perhaps cut short before achieving their full potential. Still, 154 remains a remarkable document of an emerging genre, and still somehow sounds fresh today.