Document & Eyewitness 1979-1980

Having left EMI and abandoned working as a band, Wire threw a few last blasts, wearing costumes and improvising and mangling hits at three different venues. Considered by some inside and outside of Wire a failure, D&E is the actual Godard film of this moment. Songs and arguments jump cut into each other, all of which leads into more banging about and chaos. From a distance, this has a real zing to it, an actual halo of risk over it. Some of the noise bits, like “Go Ahead,” could be on a Bushwick cassette release right now. There’s also a quietly chaotic version of “Heartbeat” from Montreux and, on the reissue, some but not all of the fascinating “Crazy About Love” 12-inch, a kind of posthumous question mark, and one of my favorite Wire releases. The post-punk desire to subvert the traditional rock band was strong with Wire, and they put in the work.