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Originally released in 2003, Send was Wire‘s first full-length album by the original quartet in a baker’s dozen years. More than just a comeback, the album is a blazing first episode in a new story arc. Wire not only combines its two previous creative incarnations, uniting its 70s psychedelic punk and 80s dance floor pop, but adds new layers of noise, melody and general weirdness. Tunes like “Spent” and “The Agfers of Kodack” push the band’s abrasive side harder than ever before, while still retaining slippery holds on minimalist melody and head-bouncing rhythm. “Being Watched” weaves strains of unsettling observation into almost lush melodicism for one of the group’s most beautiful nightmares. “Read & Burn” and “Half Eaten” hit the dance floor hard, taking a jackhammer to the glittering disco ball. “Stripping down to an almost primal thrash, “Mr. Marx’s Table” rocks out as simply as possible. Rather than retreading old ground, Wire instead uses its latest resurrection to present the most challenging album of its career.
This two-disk edition collects all the recordings made during the three years leading up to the album’s release. Most significantly, disk 2 includes tunes from the Read & Burn EPs that didn’t make the cut the first time around, like the slinky “I Don’t Understand,” the harsh, angular “Raft Ants” and the propulsive “Germ Ship,” all of which manage to be as catchy as they are ugly. Also on hand are alternate mixes of “Our Time” and “Desert Diving, which would appear on the post-_Send_ Read & Burn 3 EP, electro remixes of “12XU” that originally appeared on vinyl and a wordless slice of dance music called “DJ Fuckoff.” By marrying the original album to the excellent stray tracks and ephemera that surrounded it, the album lives up to its grandiose claim of being the “ultimate” version of Send.
