Jesus Tapdancing Christ. This is easily my favorite punk triptych and is the whole reason why I'm into a bunch of post-punk bands now. I can't even get into it: I just like it so simply.

The best thing, in my opinion, is that they play songs just as long as necessary. Especially on Pink Flag: there are few extra flourishes, no real choruses (except on songs like "Mannequins"), just a few statements with the chords thrown in and once the song is done, they're done. When the write, they don't write more than is necessary; as soon as the message is written, the song is over. The best example is "Field Day for the Sundays," which is probably my third or fourth favorite song off of the album. At 28 seconds, it says all that needs to be said - and it helps that it is a really freaking catchy song.

Also, for being a 70s punk album, Pink Flag has damn amazing production. The guitars there are one of the few on any album that I would accurately describe as "crunchy." You can simply hear them so, so, so well... Ugh, I feel like my sentences are not making any sense at all hahahaha.

Such an enormously influential series of works, on my behalf. I credit them for making me get Joy Division (which I had previously written off as sobstory mopeheads), Disco Inferno, and Crime & The City Solution. That whole artsy world of punk was opened up to me just for that, and it's awesome.

Ooo, another thought: I think Pink Flag is also so successful because a lot of punk rock was still rooted in pop music in structure. Look to Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned. Simple verse-chorus-verse structure, no real pushing the boundaries of punk format. Now Television and the like had already fucked with this formula, but they did so in an extremely experimental and quite frankly unpalatable way that is not easy to get into for new listeners. On Pink Flag, Wire simply took that ethic, eschewed traditional songwriting, and did something truly punk by basically forgoing that format. Perhaps I'm looking too much into it, but seriously, that was great.

I could keep gushing and gushing and gushing...