No Blind Spots

Wire : Outdoor Miner (long version)

[Purchase]

In 1978 Wire released Chairs Missing, the English art band's follow-up to their 1977 masterpiece Pink Flag. Chairs Missing takes the artsy rockers another full step into the new world of post punk, adding keyboards and, God forbid, guitar solos. It's a transitional album with some tunes ( like "Sand in My Joints")  that recall the short, sharp and shocking songs of Pink Flag and others that anticipate Wire's slow, atmospheric and, yes, pretentious efforts coming on 154.

As usual, one of the great joys of Wire's music comes in the lyric sheets of Graham Lewis. "Outdoor Miner", the catchiest song in Wire's catalog, is about an insect known as a leaf miner. 

Face worker, a serpentine miner 
A roof falls, an under-liner 
Of leaf structure, the egg timer

The single version is twice as long as the album cut and features some sublime piano by producer Mike Thorne. 

Pitchfork ranks Chairs Missing #33 on their list of the top 100 albums of the 1970's. Here's Ryan Schreiber'a take :

Trailing their landmark debut, Pink Flag, by only eight months, Wire’s Chairs Missing was a shock to the punk community that first embraced them. In a scene where “progressive” was a four-letter word, and keyboards and effects were weapons of the enemy, Wire bravely shrugged off their rudimentary roots and quested for something more. Critics and fans responded badly, and that Wire shared a label with Pink Floyd only added to their infamy. 

 With 25 years of hindsight, Chairs Missing is the most punk record they could have made, taking the scene’s ethics of defiance, disregard, and contempt to the greatest possible extreme. Though by no means a prog-rock opus, the album indulges in pedals, loops, and, yes, keyboards and synths, to brilliant effect, while retaining all of the pop immediacy, compositional integrity, and acute lyricism of its predecessor. Equal credit is due to producer Mike Thorne, who was responsible for squeezing these sounds of primitive machines, and Wire themselves, whose impatience and high standards pushed him to perfect the sounds they imagined. Hilariously, tying this into the whole of the list, Thorne recalls in an article on his website that “Wire said I should play synthesizers on the next album. I said, ‘I can’t move my fingers fast enough.’ They said, ‘If you don’t do it, we’ll get that Brian Eno in.’” This is one rare instance in which I can honestly say that would have been a huge mistake: He’d have killed all the joyous impulsiveness that makes this album one of the most charismatic, unpretentious experimental records the ’70s ever produced.