While the Sex Pistols ready themselves for another assault on their back catalogue, post-punk heroes Wire are too busy attacking the future to bother with their past. Always a little wiser than their contemporaries, their outsider status has enhanced their cool. Now the question is whether their trademark aggression and louche petulance can exist alongside their greying hair and comfortable trousers -though singer Colin Newman's T-shirt, bearing the legend "bastard", suggests the attitude remains intact.
Wire were the band that took the anti-art school punk movement back into the classroom. Their 1977 debut album Pink Flag, a collection of fiery, minimalist missives that combined a youthful energy with a haughty disdain, has become the template for every band that loves a good book as much as a great guitar riff.
Colin Newman's voice sneers across the jagged chords of Germ Ship, while Graham Lewis plays a heavy bassline, his face contorted with concentration. Wire are showcasing their new mini-album, Read and Burn - their first new material for a decade - and, though the songs are unfamiliar, the dizzying rush remains. Choppy rhythms fly and fall, swooping unpredictably before dying against a wall of screeching sound. Newman snatches at lyrics with an intensity echoed by Robert "Gotobed" Grey's ear-splitting drums, shouting with an expression of bemused detachment.
Wire are not a cuddly band. Their determination to be distinctive dispels any notion of catchy choruses - Newman is often incomprehensible - and there is a tension that's not restricted to their strung-out songs. Newman plays rhythm guitar against, rather than with, Bruce Gibert's lead, and each member of the band turns away from the other as they battle for prominence. Sweat drips from Lewis as he sings The Agfers of Kodack, his mouth quivering with anger, while Newman hunches over his guitar, pacing back and forth before whining over Comet's bouncy melody.
The pace relents only for the classic Lowdown, Lewis's grubby bassline humming as Newman bops like a baboon towards his microphone, his movements awkward but compelling, just like his music.
