Written by: Dave Cantrell

As it is with the Fall, I’m not even sure a new Wire record needs a review. The fact that the two bands (the term used loosely in respect to MES’s latest co-conspirators, of course) seem categorically ill-suited to be mentioned in the same critical sentence makes it paradoxically inevitable that they will be. They are the ultimate post-punk yin-yang symbiotic dichotomy (if you will), each operating on opposite sides of an Apollonian/Dionysian mirror, the specifics of which-is-which as surely unneeded of delineation as that of, say, Robert Fripp and Lemmy. While the taxonomic essences of the two in terms of style and approach could not be any more greatly unrelated – simplistic though it may be, they might just represent the London/Manchester divide as precisely as any of their generation could – Wire and the Fall are nonetheless linked by the simple fact of their dual standard-bearing longevity. With the possible exception of the Stranglers, who have quite feasibly made their last great studio album, no one else from what we could call the ‘class of ’79’ is still standing and doing so with such relatively consistent, time-defying poise. The difference, I would submit, beyond the obvious and already mentioned, is one not so much of character as caricature. The Fall, much as I love and admire them and the lank-haired iconic ruffian that fronts them with a proudly cretinous intellect as gruff and unsparing as his voice, seem, with their yearly release of a new LP arriving as dependably as a winter cold, to be sliding – gamely yet irretrievably – towards self-parody. Blame the barking intransigence of the man’s vocals becoming ever more impenetrable, blame the law of diminishing returns finally bringing the beast to heel, hell, blame that damned ‘Fall sound,’ a trap of the finest making but a trap no less, but a new Fall album (which we will never be too incurious to listen to, even if it does eventually come to involve nought but Mark E Smith and your granny on bongos) invariably invites the prospect of hoping there’ll be nothing too cringeworthy within, a fact attributable, it would seem, to the ‘band’ never really seeking to evolve but rather, with a lurching pig-headedness, attempting to constantly revisit the snap and crackle of the witch trials. It’s a form of avoidance, really, dressed up in the bolshy rags of petulance but whatever one calls it, the fact will forever remain that we’re as likely to hit the Powerball as we are to hear a Fall album that either reflects the seasoning of the man’s advancing years or dares trespass the limits of their cherished (perhaps too precious?) trademark sound. Wire, on the other hand…

While without question inhabiting their own easily identifiable sonic framework, Wire are not afraid to fuck with it, to stretch and twist and reconfigure it like the elastic thing they insist it remain. Nor are they, as evidenced by last year’s self-titled outing and this quick-on-its-heels successor, particularly shy about settling into its groove. The word here, for want of a better one (and I’m going to go ahead and use it despite the possibility that it may preclude either Colin or Graham ever speaking to me again) is maturity, albeit of a type that – and this is tricky, this – retains the band’s steely-fierce determination to keep moving forward. How they manage this, at heart, contradictory equation is key to understanding – and ultimately appreciating – the Wire of 2016 in the same critical breath as the tensile Wire of 1977, the kaleidoscopically agile Wire of 154 (or the outré shenanigans that followed), the bang-bang Wire of “Drill” or whatever era one holds most dear.

Like many older artists’ work, the underlying-yet-overarching story with Wire’s last two releases is one of cumulative, quietly explosive and deeply-earned subtlety, the gist and grist of the tracks blanketing your senses, your heart your marrow, with nuance (or most of them, anyway; a couple here still spike the adrenaline, most notably the shadowed punch of “Numbered” and “Fishes Bones”‘ curious hit of paranoiac pulse-pounding). This is not to infer the slightest wane of vitality on either Wire or Nocturnal Koreans as in reality the opposite is true and make no mistake. Energy’s not lost it’s reallocated, the band canny with its stores. And regardless, the results in large part echo those moments of shimmering mystique that haunted the borders and sighing interstices of the 154/Chairs Missing tandem (“French Film Blurred,” “The Other Window”) or really any album post-Pink Flag which, if we’re honest, our memories cling to most longingly anyway.

From the smooth metallic mercury churn of the title track opening the album through the more deliberate likes of “Internal Exile,” its steady martial rhythm stretched taut above an acoustic persistence, “Dead Weight” – the glint of a soft hypnotic menace hanging palpably – and the liminal dystopian sound field of “Forward Position” where everything from “signals buried underground” to broken promises to memory itself seems to glow like the mirage of a heat haze off on the horizon, Nocturnal Koreans‘ thematic constancy is the force of the underlying, the tempest behind the tempest. Lyrically little has altered. Dark existential, all-too-real dreamscapes brushed with a fleeting dread and ever-shifting flecks of consciousness still prevail, Graham’s weltenshauung as flinty-eyed and delicately unsparing as ever, a kind of surrealist ultra-realism that nevertheless finds time for moments of reflexive humor (“hearts of gold / no pot to piss in // join the queue / of future has-beens” from “Internal Exile” as an example). Mostly though we’re treated to a series of bruised glimpses stitched together like stark, emotionally reactive telegrams tapped out by protagonists as they attempt to negotiate their anonymous way through our increasingly tech-cluttered, über-surveilled world, the very state of affairs that, frankly, Wire has been prophetically plugged in to since well before Edward Snowden was even a distant gleam in his Coast Guard father’s eyes.

Whereas the maintenance of one’s youth – or at least the appearance of – is of course paramount in this rock music game, it’s quite possible that the acknowledgement of one’s now not-so-youthful age via the subtextual but still sparking cues of sound is in itself the ultimate rebellious act. It’s certainly, as Wire continues to prove, a bracingly honest – and necessary – one. Both Wire and now Nocturnal Koreans are nothing less than testaments to the sustained devotion to the aesthetic impulse and make even more abidingly clear what’s long been the core guiding principle for this band: Wire goes where their collective intuitive impulse takes them. The Romantic refers to this as the Muse but it seems imperishably true to say that to Colin and Graham and Robert and Matthew it’s called ‘the only way to survive as artists.’ For Wire, Nocturnal Koreans is simply another document of that ongoing process. For the rest of us it’s an inspiration, and no small marvel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxKPgMP5Oq0