Pitchfork

Wire may have made the most refreshing comeback of the century so far: Their penchant for change and a challenge is still brilliantly intact, and their new music possibly the best they've made since their original incarnation almost 30 years ago. But in a way they were never really gone, as they've filled the space in between records as a unit with side projects and collaborations too numerous to detail here, though the best of them-- DOME and Colin Newman's solo work-- have more than held their own in the shadow of the Wire mothership. And Newman's on-the-side vitality hasn't dimmed a bit (though he seems to be running out of good names for his projects-- how awful is Githead?), as this latest EP amply proves.

Newman is only the biggest name in the Githead liners-- the band is actually a partnership with Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner, and Newman's wife Malka Spigel, late of Minimal Compact. Rimbaud features in the unexpected role of guitarist, though he and Newman hardly play anything like a traditional riff. Instead, they fill these songs with watery textural washes reminiscent of Vini Reilly and pointilistic, Belew/Fripp-ish interplay. Spigel's bass thumps and bounces, giving Newman's detached vocal leads a funky underpinning and helping to humanize the rhythms provided by something called the Beat Monster.

For his part, on the mic Newman balls his emotions up tightly and shoves them down into his shoe, intoning blankly with loosely connected phrases that conjure fleeting images of clinical death and, um...creativity? The lyrics he's whispering or trading off with his bandmates (each gets at least a couple of verses) are largely incidental, though they fit well within the hospital-clean confines of the music, where any emotional leakage comes out in the guitars and the beats are all sharp and to the point.

It's actually not difficult to imagine A Bell Is a Cup-era Wire coming up with something like this, though Spigel's deft funkiness-- especially on "Profile"-- helps set the two sounds apart some. As such, it's the kind of side record that normal Wire fans are likely to find interesting, and it's even a project I wouldn't mind hearing a full-length album from, if the participants are so inclined.