Wire's Colin Newman releases a creepy and dark solo debut

Colin Newman : Alone

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In October of 1980, Wire guitarist/ vocalist Colin Newman released his debut solo album A-Z. Here Newman is extending the off-kilter synth sounds and art school attitudes of Wire's 154 album with help from Wire drummer Robert Gotobed and Pink Flag/Chairs Missing/154 producer Mike Thorne. Wire hadn't officially broken up but it would be five years before the band ever played together onstage. Graham Lewis teamed up with Bruce Gilbert to make electronic music in He Said and Dome, but he and Newman co-wrote A-Z's most memorable track, "Alone". It appears on the Silence of the Lambs soundtrack and would later be covered by This Mortal Coil. 

Alone, with too much generosity 

A theatre mask of hostility attracts 

Assaults occur infrequently 

 And those who come, to conquer? 

Need strength But damage accumulates 

Still Moving him to tears 

Retained a sense of humour

Newman told NME 

"..the lyrics are just noises that you can make with your mouth. They don't really mean anything. I can never make statements. If I say something I also say the opposite as well, and then I want to say something that states the middle ground, so I end up at the end of a piece of writing saying absolutely nothing!"

The album is a genuinely creepy and a challenging listen. The ultimate grower, it is rising in prestige as the decades go by and is considered by some to be Wire's "fourth album".

Waiting For The Divergent Wasp

Wire : I Am The Fly

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Released just a few months after their astonishing debut,  Pink Flag, Wire's new single "I Am The Fly" sounded like nothing before it. Are those guitars? Well, of course they must be. But they sound like some kind of post-modern rhythmic metal machine bearing down on us all. The chorus, as Wilson Neale has written in his 331/3 contribution Pink Flag, has Colin Newman sounding like one of Dr Who's Daleks.

What is the song about? You might think it's a first person account of what it must be like to be a housefly (musca domestica):

I am the fly in the ointment 

I can spread more disease 

Than the fleas which nibble away 

At your window display

But remember: Wire is the smartest band of them all. The tune is actually about the demise of punk rock. And Wire plans to have a role in what comes next:

Yes, I am the fly in the ointment 

I shake you down to say please 

As you accept the next dose of disease