Wire

For their 13th studio album, Wire take a break from creating music that transcends space and time to revisit their post-punk roots. Change Becomes Us is a treat for long-time fans; it's a 13-track collection of songs only ever performed live in 1979 and 1980, directly after the third in their trinity of definitive albums (Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154), before they temporarily disbanded due to creative differences. The material featured here had only ever existed as one-off, skeletal demos written to be performed live at a time when the band were at their creative peak. Change Becomes Us features Wire as a four-piece, the core line-up of Colin Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey assisted by long-time friend Matthew Simms on guitar. "Adore Your Island" best exemplifies the disjointed, bi-polar feel of the album. The track has a very noticeable start-stop/quiet-loud structure that explores both styles of progressive avant-garde ambience and quick, two-chord punk-rock riffs. "Time Lock Fog" leans towards the more electronically focused, progressive approach found on latter Wire releases. Unmistakeably, each track encapsulates the old and new in Wire's musical history.