C O V E R		R E V I E W
		The Second Coming of Wire, as it were, has gone largely undocumented for the last few years. From 1986's "Snakedrill" EP through the end of the Eighties and Manscape, the revitalized, post-punk Wire released a slew of unique tunes, melding experimental electronics with utterly mind-blowing pop hooks. If you weren't into Wire back then, or were simply too young to appreciate them, Coatings is an essential addition to your music library -- and by populating the disc with alternate versions of the best-known songs, Mr. Newman et al have insured that completists will take their place in the record shop queue, too. And for your hard-earned cash, you'll own gems like "A Serious of Snakes", here in an even more undulating, bass-heavy form than the original, and the utterly classic (and thoroughly nonsensical) word-collage epic "Kidney Bingos". You'll get the club mix of "In Vivo", relive the pulsating urgency of "Drill" and thrill to the general oddness of "German Shepherds". And the Manscape-era B-sides that close the disc will give you an idea of where Wire were going when all the "let's drop the 'e' off the end of our name 'cos one of us has left the band" nonsense started. If you call yourself any sort of punk-rock type at all, your shelf of Music That Still Sounds New More Than Ten Years Later simply isn't complete without Coatings -- and you younger types owe it to yourselves to see what all the fuss was about.
	I N F O
Wire Coatings WMO CD
		Review by George Zahora

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