Written by: Alex Green

The legendary post-punk outfit Wire are getting ready to release reissues of their first three albums.

Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 are going to be treated to comprehensive reissues, via the band’s own Pink Flag label.

Set to be released May 18, the albums will be put out in the form of 80-page hardback books. The books will be comprehensive and deeply detailed with recording notes, interviews, lyrics and photos taken by Annette Green, who is the band’s official photographer.

As for the music, there will be full discs of unreleased singles, demos, B-sides and never-before-released material.

Pink Flag will be released on 2 CDs, while Chairs Missing and 154 will be 3-disc sets.

All three remastered albums will be available on vinyl June 22.

Special editions with additional tracks will not be released in a digital format.

Of Chairs Missing, SEM’s Senior Editor Dave Cantrell wrote: “Straddling, merging, contrasting, and cross-weaving the brilliantly disparate strands of canny pop experimentalism and a level of sonic adventurism to rival the likes of Eno or Can, combined with a burgeoning mastery of the studio – a mutual arrangement of ambition with Mike Thorne – Chairs Missing marks the jumping off place for Wire, the place where utter – some might say flagrant – artistic courage was drafted as the band’s core tenet. From this point forward no footstep, once created, would ever be stepped in again.”

In other Wire news, on Record Store Day (April 21), the band will also be releasing a box set of 7” singles called Nine Sevens.