Black Wire's a Leeds, England trio with foppy glamcuts and a T. Rex/Faint kind of thing with some toe-tapping lockgrooves. This is all delivered with (albeit cleverly spiked) fuckpump progressions that have been done into the ground so deep that you'd think something more interesting would've sprouted up in their place by now. They'd probably argue with something like hey, it's only rock 'n' roll. We're talkin' tried and true ya flippin internet toad! More like tired and true. Trite and true. The truth being that adroit but ultimately empty bandwagoneers will never cease to come around. And jerk-offs like Kaiser Chiefs will write a song about them. And the mainstream press will rave. And people like me will throw out their pithy and snide dismissals.
The rampant sex in this music is just boring. It's black pleather dildos and hand-me-down come-ons. There's no identity beyond latent adolescence and a punchy format that comes on strong and lingers as blasé as its minimalist softcore album cover of a tangled phone chord. Austere on the outside and shallow on the inside, the music of Black Wire is just so naggingly inessential. The vocals are the most offensively derivative, doing absolutely nothing to distance the band from their peers. The galloping "Smoke and Mirrors" would be something of a standout if the vocals weren't so damned familiar. I find myself longing for GoGoGo Airheart's last one. Disappointing as it was, there was considerably more going for it in terms of novel, approaching memorable, songwriting.
Black Wire's undeniably kinetic in terms of rhythmic chops. With its snappy production driving the tunes and making you jerk your body around, I can see how the hyperbole machine got a-chugging. Yet since the days of The Clash, there's been band after band after band doing minor variations on this jaunty sort of post-punk. I'm sick of it. If you're not, I guess you'd enjoy Black Wire. They're essentially rip-off artists, but they know what they're doing.
1. God of Traffic
2. Attack! Attack! Attack!
3. Smoke and Mirrors
4. Promote The Happy Hours
5. Hard To Love Easy To Lay
6. 800 Million Heart Beats
7. Broken Back
8. Both Your Houses
9. The Face
10. Very Gun
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