Chairs Missing

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Chairs Missing
Chairs Missing cover
Studio album by Wire
Released August, 1978
Recorded 1978
Genre Post-punk
Length 42:27
Label Harvest Records, pinkflag
Producer(s) Mike Thorne
Professional reviews
Wire chronology
Pink Flag
(1977)
Chairs Missing
(1978)
154
(1979)


Chairs Missing is the second album by the band Wire. It was released in 1978. Although it shares a punk-derived "outsider" voice with the band's debut, Pink Flag, it features more developed song structure (taking some cues from 70's prog-rock and art rock) and a broader palette of emotional and intellectual subject matter. The album was produced by Mike Thorne. Thorne added keyboard and synthesizer elements (compare the versions of "Outdoor Miner"; with and without the piano accompaniment), which were later expanded upon by the band members on their later releases. These contributions add to the album's identification as the release in which Wire largely transcended and abandoned the punk genre. The pop sensibilities that would come to the fore in their later incarnation of 1985 are evident in songs such as "Outdoor Miner" and "I Am the Fly". EMI appreciated the more melodic sound of "Outdoor Miner" so much that they asked the band to come up with an expanded version of the song for release as a single (which was rather perverse, considering the fact that single releases are normally shortened versions of album tracks).

[edit] Track listing

  1. "Practice Makes Perfect" – 4:11
  2. "French Film Blurred" – 2:34
  3. "Another the Letter" – 1:07
  4. "Men 2nd" – 1:43
  5. "Marooned" – 2:21
  6. "Sand in My Joints" – 1:50
  7. "Being Sucked in Again" – 3:14
  8. "Heartbeat" – 3:16
  9. "Mercy" – 5:46
  10. "Outdoor Miner" – 1:44
  11. "I Am the Fly" – 3:09
  12. "I Feel Mysterious Today" – 1:57
  13. "From the Nursery" – 2:58
  14. "Used To" – 2:23
  15. "Too Late" – 4:14

Various CD reissues have included additional tracks: the initial US release included "Go Ahead", "Former Airline" and "A Question of Degree"; the 1994 Harvest release removed "Go Ahead" (placing it on "154"). However, all such extra tracks have been removed from the 2006 remastered reissues, because they, according to the band, didn't honour the "conceptual clarity of the original statements".