Yep Roc Records
2004
Wire Post To Wire
About This Album
The Standard took their time with Wire Post to Wire, the result being an album that's as gorgeously tasteful as it is frighteningly tense. There's something anxious in the pattering rhythm to the Clinic-ish "Even Numbers," and as the guitars rush forth you might expect an explosion. Instead, Jay Clarke's sophisticated piano line takes the fore, matching the fragility in Tim Putnam's wavering vocal. It's a pretty incredible thing to hear, this maturity. After all, aren't these post-everything bands supposed to be chock-full of vim, vigor, spike, and squelch? On the contrary, the Standard revel in fueling their angular (and angry) side with that incredible piano of Putnam's, and a lyrical mystery that's usually unsettling, but occasionally heartbreakingly gorgeous. It's like crying over a foreign film whose language you do not understand. The darker side of Wire has its day in the black sun with "Ghosts for Hire," which stutters and stops in post-punk melancholia as the guitarists build aching melodies from echoing stairways. The six-plus-minute "Folk Song" begins as a solo piano piece, with Putnam seeming to lament a mother's grief over her lost son.
Track List (try tracks 1,4,5 and 8)

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