Weekend aren’t on a hiding to nothing by any means, but the polite applause and sporadic chatter that greets their pretty functional post-punk noise is more than just the result of playing to the wrong crowd. The San Franciscan three-piece have something of the choppy post-punk of the class of 2004, a bit of the Big Music overcoat revivalism of Interpol and a little noisy shoegaze, but the cumulative effect is not only strangely muted but has the unfortunate effect of making them appear dated in relation to movements that passed just moments ago. You’d like them to cut loose, wheel around the stage a bit, dissolve into feedback catharsis, but it’s too controlled, clipped, poised; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s dull polish is recalled rather than, say, A Place To Bury Strangers or Factory Floor. Bands who transcend those influences, in other words. Not bad, but neither sufficiently striking or memorable that you can imagine what they’re for.
Wire’s appearance onstage throws the average age of the crowd into some relief. Colin Newman, bespectacled and professorial, offers cordial greetings. Graham Lewis’ greatcoat and cossack hat combo gives him the air of a bailiff attending a Remembrance Sunday parade. Drummer Robert Grey, at 59, could be touring guitarist Matt Simms’ grandfather. A glance at the Fleece’s upcoming punk promotions – King Kurt, UK Subs, Anti-Nowhere League – demonstrates what an anomaly Wire remain 34 years after Pink Flag. That album – oblique, detached lyrics wrapped in hyper-condensed 90-second punk bursts and appearing on reviled prog label Harvest – set the tone for a contrarian career whose idiosyncratic path continued after their 2003 re-emergence. In recent years they’ve been gloweringly intense and very, very loud onstage, befitting the heavy, almost industrial textures of Send and Object 47. This year’s 30-year high water mark Red Barked Tree, however, revisits more deliberate and intricate territory, and the volume and ferocity is turned down appropriately. (This may be offered in mitigation of Weekend’s slightly damp efforts). So, while the straight-ahead thrash of ‘Two Minutes’ or ‘A Flat Tent’ act as teasers for the odd spiky-topped loyalist tonight the knotty, Eno-like pop of Lewis’ wonderful two-fingered barb ‘Please Take’ or Newman’s measured ‘Down To This’ meet with enthusiastic but more muted response. It’s nicely fitting that the earliest visit to pastures old, some way into the set, is 1988’s Robyn Hitchcock-esque MTV curio ‘Kidney Bingos’, the same enigmatic wordiness given unexpectedly poppy clarity. We’re forced to leave for the Temple Meads dash as they reappear for the encore, but while you’d begrudge the loyal masses nothing you kind of hope the band continued to buck expectation. Just as for the last 35 years or so.
