It's Beginning To And Back Again

Album review

Continuing its fascination with manipulating sounds and radically reworking their own songs, Wire released IT'S BEGINNING TO AND BACK AGAIN (A.K.A. IBTABA), an engaging collection of tracks largely drawn from their 1988 album A BELL IS A CUP UNTIL IT IS STRUCK. While on tour promoting that album, the band recorded a number of live shows. Though songs from two of those performances, one in Chicago and one in Portugal, form the basis for IBTABA, this is not a live album. The band almost entirely restructured the songs in the studio, and the resultant tracks have a very different feel to the original studio versions.

Highlights include the catchy "Eardrum Buzz," complete with a sawing bass line, jittering percussion, and sing-along (though very strange) lyrics, and "Public Place," which is reworked into an eerie, spacious ambient excursion with vocals. There's a vastly superior version of THE IDEAL COPY's "Over Theirs," featuring an amped-up phased guitar and a brutal chopping beat, and "The Offer," an uncharacteristically simple-sounding pop song. IBTABA is an essential purchase for fans.

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