Track Listing

1. Practise Makes Perfect
2. French Film Blurred
3. Another the Letter
4. Men 2nd
5. Marooned
6. Sand in My Joints
7. Being Sucked in Again
8. Heartbeat
9. Mercy
10. Outdoor Miner
11. I Am the Fly
12. I Feel Mysterious Today
13. From the Nursery
14. Used To
15. Too Late

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99513 in Music
• Brand: Dig
• Released on: 2006-04-11
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .16 pounds

Album Description
Japanese pressing is part of a reissue series of three albums from Wire featuring digital remastering and Japan original cardboard sleeve jacket designs. Complete series includes Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154. Virgin. 2006.

Amazon.com
By the time of their sophomore effort, Wire had notched plenty of live gigs off the incredible strength of their debut Pink Flag. Where its predecessor had been awash in herky jerks and jagged guitars, Chairs was rife with what must've seemed like downright longform musical essays. The dirge-like "Mercy," after all, clocks in at an unheard-of five minutes and 46 seconds, and the synth-surrounded "Another the Letter" is the only song that spans just over a minute, sirening and getting nervy and portending 1979's third Wire outing, 154. It's a silly phrase given the stature of Wire's debut, but compared to Pink Flag (see how silly it is to compare things to Pink Flag?), what's here is diffuse. It's also brilliant: claustrophobic and rich in post-punk detail, furious and floating, anthemic ("Sand in My Joints") and pop-laden ("Outdoor Miner"). And now it's back, in a gatefold digipak, remastered and rich in color. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

Chairs Missing is incredible; and if you don't have it, you really should
In 1978, being qualified as "the Pink Floyd of the New Wave" might have come across as something of an insult; and by today's artistic strategies of rampant revivalism such a pithy remark may ring true to many a listener. That statement was, in fact, the critique prescribed to Chairs Missing, Wire's second album, as the album decelerated the pogo punk minimalism found on their first album with an increasing use of experimental production. In hindsight, Chairs Missing is the perfect transition between the high-strung velocity of Pink Flag and the staggering gloominess of 154; yet most transition records have a clunkiness about them, like a lanky teenager not quite able to fit into his sunday best. But Chairs Missing is miles above the average transition album.

To many a listener, Chairs Missing stands as the ultimate Wire album, with near perfect pop songs alternating between anthemic punk and eccentric production techniques (i.e. atonal synth drone, staccato guitar chops, overdubbed guitar distortion, etc.). Where Pink Flag kept many of the songs under a minute and half, Chairs Missing is downright baroque in its presentation of 3 minute tunes. The genius of Chairs Missing is how Colin Newman, Robert Gotobed, Bruce Gilbert, and Graham Lewis manage to steer through the diverse songwriting landscape, in how the album's opening track "Practice Makes Perfect" transitions from a delicate prance for jangled guitar into a precise expression of menace, in how "Outdoor Miner" creates the catchiest, Beatlesque chorus you'll never be able to sing back to yourself given the complexity of its rejoining, nonsensical syllables, in how jaggedly clean the guitars of Newman and Gilbert attack each other, in how Lewis' bass is fluid and effortless, in how this run-on sentence seems to have lost its way trying to fathom the complexity of Wire.

If you believe that the length of my reviews directly correlate to how good the record actually is, then I have failed as I would need to write a f-cking a book about how stunning this album is. Yeah, Chairs Missing is incredible; and if you don't have it, you really should.

Probably their best album
'Chairs Missing' is yet another of those unfortunate "transitional" albums, that tend to get somewhat overlooked. 'Pink Flag' was a punk classic, and '154' widely acknowledged as a post-punk masterpiece, but 'Chairs Missing' sometimes falls between the cracks a bit. But this is arguably their best album, certainly it's their most diverse, retaining the energy of their debut while incorporating synths, studio effects and different shades of production.

There are a few energetic punk anthems worthy of 'Pink Flag' here; 'Men 2nd', 'From the Nursery', the proto-noise-rock 'Sand In My Joints' and the frenetic closer 'Too Late'. Elsewhere, the songs and arrangements are much more ambitious. The highlights are the defiant punk/pop declaration 'I Am The Fly', and the suprisingly sunny pop of 'Outdoor Miner'. 'Heartbeat' and the opener 'Practice Makes Perfect' are unsettling slow-burns, while 'Marooned', 'French Film Blurred' and 'Used To' are more subdued and accessible. The centrepiece 'Mercy' mixes punk attitude with an art-rock arrangement, while 'Another The Letter' sounds like a three-way marraige of punk, synthpop and psychadelia.

And it all works. There's not one mis-step or awkward moment here. The raw punk songs still hit hard, and the ambitious tracks never sound bloated or pretentious. And despite all the diversity, the album fits together as a whole quite well, because Wire sound so comfortable no matter what they're doing.

A great album from an legendary band in top form. Five stars.

Indie History 101
If you do not know what this title is and you are reading this review, then you are not that cool...just kidding (maybe you were born after it came out). Consider that in the late 70s early 80s pop music was a mix between hair bands, post disco pop drivel, and maybe some english synth bands ( a la duran duran). Wire was part of a post-punk movement that is influential amongst indie bands today. Consider the context of Joy Division--early New Order, early Cure, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, the Buzzcocks and you can see where Wire fits in. While Colin Newman and crew did not release too many albums, there was a precision and technical perfection that was lacking in punk releases yet not as extreme as some of the artier edges of alternative music. I must say that one of my all time FAVORITE songs is Outdoor Miner. This release is ethereal, powerful, interesting, and beautiful-but-edgy. When it came out it was lost (see the above context statements), yet it is timeless. Current bands like the Editors, Interpol, even TV on Radio owe as much a debt to Wire as Joy Division. Highly recommended to the kiddies as well as their parents (egads are we that old?).