There are many bands who are inspired — and lucky — enough to have never released a bad album. Wire aren’t quite one of those bands, but the lackluster albums aren’t outright disasters, and even when working with some of their least interesting material, you can hear a kernel of inspiration amid the mediocre moments. To their credit, though, Wire never stuck with one idea for too long, so if something didn’t work, they’d move on to the next one without hesitation. Even if an idea did work, come to think of it, they’d still move on. 

There’s something admirable about a band so motivated to never repeat the past. Except for that one time that they did, on 2013’s Change Becomes Us, and it was one of their best albums in decades. The idea behind the album, which was the fourth in a series of consistently excellent post-millennial releases, is a reclamation of the material the band foisted upon a less-than-receptive audience on Document & Witness. In that context, the songs were conceptual art pieces that sounded nothing like punk, or post-punk, or even rock music in a very loose, abstract sense. And the audience didn’t really care for it. Here, the songs are nearly unrecognizable from their early versions, outside of the choppy sing-speak of “Eels Sang” (originally “Eels Sang Lino”), and are transformed from loose sketches into proper songs. And they’re exquisite.

“Love Bends” (a reworked “Piano Tuner [Keep Strumming Those Guitars]”) is a lushly arranged new wave pop tune that leans heavily on synthesizers and dramatic hooks, while “Doubles and Trebles” (formerly “Ally in Exile”) chugs with a hard-rock swagger. And though the stellar “Keep Exhaling” is less than two minutes long, it turns “Relationship” into one of the most gorgeously composed songs of the bunch. Some moments aren’t as artful in their execution; “Adore Your Island” booms and bursts with the arena-rock bombast of the Who, and it’s an odd fit. But it’s also not necessarily a bad song, nor is any other track here, and that’s illustrative of the album’s conceit as a whole. Maybe there’s a good idea in every song, no matter how ill-formed and undercooked, and sometimes you just need to allow them some space before they become fully realized.