Album Review: Wire - Change Becomes Us

Change Becomes Us has an interesting, perplexing back-story. After the excellence of their first three records Pink Flag (1977), Chairs Missing (1978) and 154 (1979), the band had material ready for a fourth album that failed to arrive as the core trio of Colin Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey began to implode. Some of the tracks made the grade in live performances in 1980, but in the main they were left by the wayside.

Cue 2012. Newman, Lewis and Grey are back together; Wire is as crucial as ever; and their last original album release, 2011's Red Barked Tree, was filled with the vitality that made their initial explorations so potent. Joined by guitarist Matthew Sims, they revisit these songs and the album title becomes an apt signifier – the hunger and vitriol of their youth mingles with their age and the future for this fascinating record.

Doubles & Trebles kicks off in typical Wire-esque fashion – a stuttering, cold anti-anthem about isolation behind enemy lines. Yet it's when Keep Exhaling hits that we realise that these wily dogs continue to confound, contuse and explore – a sub-two minute Bowie malaise over a quickfire drumbeat, underlining why bands like Muse seem so hollow and artificial. The opening riff on Adore Your Island taps on the shoulder of Baba O'Reilly, Newman's vocals drifting forward like a sleepy Roger Waters, before a jarring punk pummelling starts, then stops. Lewis takes the vocal reins for Re-Invent Your Second Wheel, a good little pop song; and while Stealth Of A Stork and Eels Sang riff off old times, Change Becomes Us remains an exciting album – recycling in creative overdrive.