Wire’s transition into the ’90s was an awkward one, which can partially be attributed to founding drummer Robert Gotobed leaving the group in 1990. The band briefly kept going as a trio, and their growing interest in electronic music, theoretically, meant that the loss of live drums wouldn’t leave them handicapped. However, as the band had immersed themselves into late-’80s alternative dance sounds, their creative spark had begun to fizzle, hitting its nadir on 1991’s The Drill.

An album-length series of reprises of their 1986 single “Drill,” The Drill is essentially a remix album packaged as a studio album, and the lone entry in Wire’s catalog that smacks of contractual obligation. In its original form, “Drill” is one of the best songs the band released during their ’80s resurgence, all industrial-thud rhythms and “dugga, dugga, dugga” mantra repetitions. Here, it’s more of a mixed bag. When the band builds something entirely new from its rubble, as on the disco-pop opener “In Every City” and the exotic loop exercise of “What’s Your Desire,” The Drill reveals a band that hasn’t lost its ability to innovate. On “Jumping Mint?” or “Where Are You Now?,” the album grows tedious and redundant. If it’s a failure, however, it’s a noble one, proving that Wire still found a way to craft something halfway interesting out of running a single track into the ground.