WIRE - Red Barked Tree

"Who are your influences?"

That, the most hated and rudimentary of rock band interview questions, is also one of the most difficult ones to answer honestly. That's because the same cross-pollination that has led us to increasingly broad record collections has greatly muddied and blurred whole paths of rock's family tree. Do young bands that model themselves after Radiohead know that much about Neu! or Autechre? Let's call it indirect inspiration.

In this case, few bands can claim to be as unknowingly pickpocketed by the present as Wire. Sure, that whole Elastica thing was pretty blatant, but nearly two decades after that incident, it's telling that you don't even need to sound much like Wire to borrow from their playbook. Their clipped song lengths and nervous guitar riffs; their synth explorations and mood-setting slabs of atmosphere; their moments of minimalist rhythms—artists can pick up on any one of these characteristics and run with them in any direction they choose (see Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard's assertion that Wire were his favourite band, bringing tiny song lengths to his otherwise Beatles/Who/prog inspired records).

Thankfully, you can add to that list Wire themselves. Because even though 1976 was thirty-five years ago, the band has—intermittently at least—continued to build from and expand on their ground-breaking sound. With Red Barked Tree, their twelfth album, Wire continue to make music that sounds both completely at home in their back catalogue and thoroughly contemporary. 

Despite the mileage, the group is anything but tentative. The lock-step "Moreover" and accurately-titled "Two Minutes" are full of singer Colin Newman's heavily enunciated English vigour, and find Wire in pretty admirable fighting shape. On their own, these noisier tunes would feel a touch forced for a bunch of men pushing 60. Fortunately, these gents were never as simple a concept as many of their contemporaries turned out to be. An ability to construct affectingly reflective pop songs provides Red Barked Tree with the balance that makes it tick. "Adapt" swirls and spins around a beautiful drifting melody, while the acoustically-powered title track is a stately closer that glides home on its repeated quest "to find the healing red-barked trees". And it's not all just about ping-ponging sonically between extremes. "Smash" is the best of both worlds, merging sheets of feedback with a total ear-candy chorus.

For a band that built their rep on playing unpredictably with all of the best elements of punk, underground pop, and experimental music, it makes complete sense that Wire have aged so well—they're never really in one spot long enough for anything to get stale.