Silver/Lead

Rating

Album: Silver/Lead
#	Song Title		Time
1)	Playing Harp for the Fishes	More Info...	0:03
2)	Short Elevated Period	More Info...	0:03
3)	Diamonds in Cups	More Info...	0:04
4)	Forever & a Day	More Info...	0:04
5)	An Alibi	More Info...	0:03
6)	Sonic Lens	More Info...	0:04
7)	This Time	More Info...	0:04
8)	Brio	More Info...	0:03
9)	Sleep On the Wing	More Info...	0:03
10)	Silver/lead	More Info...	0:02

Performer Notes

Audio Mixer: Colin Newman.
Recording information: Rockfield, Monmouth; Swim Studio.
On Silver/Lead, Wire celebrate their 40th anniversary by throwing some intentional kinks into their well-oiled machinery. Much of their music in the 2010s was as fast-paced as their release schedule, but on their 15th album, they're slower and stranger than they've been in years. Aside from the swift guitar pop of "In a Short Elevated Period," this album doesn't blaze like Change Becomes Us or Nocturnal Koreans; instead, it turns the energy of those albums inward on songs that shimmer like silver and have the heft of lead. Wire are just as keenly observant when they're introspective as when they take aim at the outside world, and when Colin Newman sings "be a good witness of all that you've seen" on the minor-key T. Rex riffage of "Diamonds in Cups," it's an apt description of their modus operandi. Meanwhile, the grinding opener "Playing Harp for the Fishes," which features bassist Graham Lewis on vocals, revives the darkly surreal ruminations that this incarnation of the band seemed to have left behind. The feeling that Silver/Lead's songs should be faster creates a different kind of tension that's arguably more provocative, and interesting, than a barrage of rapid-fire tempos. "An Alibi" is an uneasy post-punk lullaby, while the ironically named "Brio" evokes the languid spaciness of Pink Floyd as well as the desolation Wire mastered decades ago. Slowing things down also lets the melancholy that bubbled under on Wire come to the surface, and Silver/Lead delivers some of the band's prettiest, and saddest, music in some time. Newman imbues "Sleep on the Wing" with a highly literate, ever so slightly ominous sorrow, while Lewis' weary baritone is used perfectly on "This Time," where he sings "this time is gonna be better" to a melody that sounds like a lie the moment it leaves his lips. And when he sings "Ooh darling/I want you to stay" on "Forever & a Day," it shows just how much power naked emotion can have in the hands of a band as famously cerebral and aloof as this one. As precise as ever yet oddly moving, Silver/Lead reaffirms that Wire are more like mercury, shape-shifting effortlessly while remaining true to the things that have always made them great. ~ Heather Phares

Professional Reviews

Alternative Press - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "Listen closely for small nods to the group's past, like the grinding guitar of 'This Time' that echoes the sound of 1978's 'I Am The Fly,' but trust that Wire still have their feet firmly planted in the present."

Magnet - "[S]ingers Colin Newman and Graham Lewis express concern and vulnerability....You have to toast Wire's willingness to keep on trying new things."

Paste (magazine) - "For SILVER/LEAD, it's a wedding between the hushed tones of their eponymous 2015 release and the catchy-as-hell hooks of 2016's NOCTURNAL KOREANS. And like 154, it sounds haunted to the core."

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