A Bell Is a Cup Until It Is Struck by Wire

A Bell Is a Cup Until It Is Struck, Wire's fifth studio album, came out on Mute in 1988 with Gareth Jones producing, and it finds the London post-punk pioneers in their sleekest suit. Four of the founders were still aboard: Colin Newman on guitar and vocals, Graham Lewis on bass and vocals, Bruce Gilbert on guitar and Robert Gotobed on drums.

Picking up where The Ideal Copy left off, it's cool, gleaming, dance-leaning pop with the burrs filed down, and some listeners accused the band of trading its old rough edges for polish. Lewis waved that away: the abrasion, he argued, had always lived in the words and the sounds themselves, not the surface. Trouser Press first heard a dreamy, ruminative record, then cooled on it in a later edition, while AllMusic has since called it a contender for Wire's best. "Kidney Bingos" is the track the countdowns kept.

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