WIRE - Heartbeat

 

(JS)

My entry into the world of popular music was not an arrow hitting a target, it was more of a nervous meandering, a rejection of that that was old and a desire to be kissed by something new. In 1979, golden age prog was dead (“The Wall”), rock gods Zeppelin floored by the death of their drummer and my brain was going somewhere else. Flushed with too many hormones I was assaulted by the Clash, the Talking Heads and Joy Division, whilst I consciously turned my back on Queen, Bowie and Rainbow, bands like The B52s, Magazine, Gang of Four, XTC, Public Image genuinely captured my musical attention by actively trying something new. Aided by Oldham record library, the cassette/walkman revolution and the Old Grey Whistle Test my horizons were tested almost daily with something new. 

Wire came from a random pick based on the arty cover of “Chair’s Missing”. It was taped and not listened to for months because the band appeared to ignore the music publicity cycle. I caught a bleak performance of this song where a dark stage unleashed a particularly starkly underlit, twitchy Colin Newman on me. Earlier that evening I had been listening to Shine on you Crazy Diamond, which by contrast seemed over done compared to the drama and simplicity of Heartbeat. I particularly love the gentle crescendo as the rest of the band join in and the gentle fall to the end of the song

Lyrically the song is as ambiguous as it gets,

I feel icy

I feel cold

I feel old

Is there something here

behind me?

I'm sublime

I'm sublime

I'm sublime

I'm sublime

I'm sublime

I'm sublime

I'm sublime

I'm sublime

I feel empty

I feel dark

I remark

I am mesmerized

By my own beat

Like a heartbeat

Like a heartbeat. 

Its simple purity is what has made the song a comparison piece to many future songs I have heard. Is this song better than Heartbeat?  Some have been, but to be honest not many.

(PS)

An intriguing post-punk song released on the progressive EMI Harvest label, with a lo-fi DIY ethic alongside a healthy dose of that prog inventiveness; especially when comparing it to the cover version by Big Black from 9 years later which seems to miss the whole point of the song, cranking it up way too much and losing all of the suspense.

Heartbeat is an atmospheric song which starts down low and draws you in with the expectation of a huge climax, building and building - but then holds back and dies back down like an aborted resuscitation. It's touted as a love song, but it's surely unrequited (or at least unconsummated) if so. 

It sounds like the missing link between Wreckless Eric and the Cure and held my attention for way longer than a song with just two chords and no chorus had any right to. There's also a flute in there somewhere apparently, but it's so far down in the mix I can't pick it out. Maybe a further spin on vinyl is required, but unless it's languishing in a bargain bin I shan't shell out too much for it. 

(MS)

 

It seems that by the time the Wire finally made it to the party the only thing left in the Aftermath was the rotting corpse of The Stones' monotonously chugging rave-up-wig-out "Goin' Home". Carving off a slice from the mid-section, the song's carnal grunts of sweaty expectation were eschewed for something altogether colder and abstract and angular. It was all neon strips and breeze-block brutalism, broody, teutonic. But not the exotica moonscape of Bowie's Berlin, this is the sound of the Corbusier-inspired shopping plaza ennui of the rain-drenched radial towns where shaven-headed men were purchasing pin-stripe shirts from Burton's with irony. Behold the New Wave.