When I first heard Read & Burn 03, I thought, here's something that is significantly different from the previous album, Send, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why other than to say, I thought the guitar portion was weak. I recall reading that guitarist, Bruce Gilbert, left the band a few years ago, but without a listing of band members, on said EP, it slipped.
Along comes Object 47 with the listing of the new Wire and indeed, no Bruce Gilbert. Is this a terrible thing? No, not really. Wire had an incarnation as WIR (dropping the E) to indicate that Robert Grey was not present on The First Letter, and that was an excellent album... certainly one of the best from the late 80s and early 90s line-up. Perhaps the band should have renamed itself it again to indicate this is not the full original band.
Object 47 is more like collaboration between Colin Newman and Graham Lewis than it is a true Wire album. After all, without Bruce Gilbert's distinctive guitar work, is it really Wire? But this is an excellent album all the same; it's just that it takes some time getting used to (as did previous collaborations between Lewis and Gilbert did under the band name, Dome). As a previous reviewer stated, it might come off as 'boring' at first, but stick with it. Newman and Lewis are quite talented and have pulled off quite a miracle considering the loss of their lead guitarist.
I gave it 4-stars (because it is hard to put this on level of Send, Pink Flag, Missing Chairs and 154). Had I reviewed it when I first heard it, it would have been 3. Who knows? After another month and after becoming more accustomed to it, it may rate higher still. In the end, anything from Newman and/or Lewis is better than 90% of everything else out there.
