Wire’s Pink Flag (2009)

About half of this treatment for the 33-1/3 series by Wilson Neate of Wire’s classic debut is devoted to going through the album track by track, a daunting task in a way for an album with 21 tracks clocking in under 36 minutes. I’ve always been in the minority on Wire, more of a partisan for their third album, 154, but Neate has rounded up a lot of notables stumping for Pink Flag, including Steve Albini (Big Black, Rapeman, and notorious producer at large, R.I.P.), Graham Coxon (Blur), Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices), and others. Neate spends the first half mainly on positioning Wire within the rock and punk-rock welter as it existed in 1977. He makes a good argument that Wire was set apart from punk-rock—and from rock—by the band’s clinical aesthetics, which developed further as they went. There’s also a good deal of interesting information here about how the album was recorded and the various essential contributions of producer Mike Thorne. I know Pink Flag reasonably well and had a gratifying session studying the track-by-track here closely, playing each song, reading Neate’s text, and often playing the song again. Among other things it helped me identify definitively my own specific favorites, such as “Three Girl Rhumba” (1:23) and especially “Lowdown” (2:26). More than anything it convinced me of what I’ve always sensed intuitively, which is that Pink Flag is perhaps thought of best as a single cohesive whole (or two, given vinyl albums) rather than 21 disparate parts. I tend to lose track of this album at the molecular level of individual songs. Neate also focuses closely on the mostly illegible lyrics, reading closely into them, as Pink Flag was that unusual punk-rock album which included a lyric sheet. Even knowing the lyrics and reading along with Neate and an online lyric sheet I had a hard time making them out. But I’m more of the school that most rock lyrics are a tantalizing distraction at best, with some exceptions such as slogans, chants, and many Bob Dylan songs. Most times, when I actually look into it, the specific words and their meaning are more beside the point. But Neate would be one to disagree, and his exegeses are detailed, multileveled, complex, and sometimes interesting. It was a treat to hear Pink Flag again and I appreciated the wide scope of interview subjects assembled here. It makes complete sense, for example, that Robert Pollard is a big fan of Pink Flag. Much of his own career has been in pursuit of the kinds of song fragments found on it. This 33-1/3 is solid for all fans of the band and album.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.