Interrupting My Train of Thought

Wire : Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW

[Purchase]

On September 23, 1979 Wire released 154, the band's third and most overlooked of its original classic albums. So named because the band had played 154 gigs at the time of the album's release, 154 finds Wire heading into a strange, fascinating art-rock direction. Only Talking Heads had a more interesting musical journey. 

154 isn't the kind of album any critic could quickly sum up. One must breathe in its atmosphere and live in its alienated world for months, maybe years to get the full gist. There are songs about a cartographer referencing Centerville, Illinois, there's a horse caught up in a barbed wire fence, a sunburn that may turn its subject into a lobster. As the years pass, this could become your favorite Wire album.

Out of the gate, Red Starr of Smash Hits gave the album 7.5 out of 10 writing: 

Powerfully intense atmosphere but muscular and melodic, sparingly but very effectively decorated--it's the same dark landscape as Bowie, but very much better than Lodger.

And Robert Christgau gave the album a B in his review:

Predictions that these art-schoolers would turn into art-rockers no longer seem so cynical. Their gift for the horrifying vignette remains. But their tempos are slowing, sometimes to a crawl, as their textures venture toward the orchestral, and neither effect enhances the power of their vignettes, which become ever more personalistic and/or abstract.

Spin editor Eric Weisbard writes:

 "Wire's pretensions were starting to slow down the music...it becomes difficult to enjoy much here, though even lesser material like "The 15th" and "On Returning" is musically savvy enough to off-handedly anticipate The Pixies."

Pitchfork ranks 154 the 85th best album of the 1970s (Chairs Missing ranked #33 and Pink Flag #22). Joe Tangari writes :

They had lost much of their rawness, but none of their edge, pushing into clanging, even chilling electronic textures and oddly moving their catchiest melodies to the front of the mix, conceding to pop convention even as they perverted it.  

After three classic albums, creative differences forced the band to break up for five years.