Wire – Pink Flag

I wanted to put a punk record in the mix today, but I wanted something a bit more art school than Sham 69! I remember having Pink Flag and Chairs Missing about five or six years after they had come out. I loved the brevity and the snappiness of their music, and the weird lyrics. Lush covered a couple of Wire songs later: ‘Mannequin’ and ‘Outdoor Miner’. I’m actually quite good friends with Colin Newman now too. I played on stage with Wire in Heaven in 2006. I was really honoured to be asked to do that – there were twenty people on stage but one of them was me! They’ve been supportive of me in the last few years, which has been lovely. Their later stuff is really good too, like Kidney Bingos. But I picked Pink Flag because I love how it sounds. The tracks have been recorded one after another in a room. The guitar sound doesn’t change much over all of the 21 tracks. It’s just fantastic.