Review: Gang Of Four - Content

Keep It Like A Secret circa 2011 is beginning to read like it's 1979 again. Just two weeks after Wire's rather fine Red Barked Tree comes Content, Gang of Four's first album of new material since 1995's Shrinkwrapped. The album title - which refers to the role of TV scheduling as a filler for the space between advertising - certainly befits the band that released the seminal Entertainment! And on the face of it, this sounds like the same band too; Andy Gill still fires metallic shards from his guitar, the dub-funk basslines (now courtesy of Thomas McNeice in place of Dave Allen) are present and correct, and Jon King still seems like a man with something to say.

And yet right from the first track, things just don't feel quite right. The nervous energy that seethes through She Said "You Made A Thing Of Me" feels forced; over a reverberating guitar line and a pulsing rhythm, King's overly desperate vocals sound like someone trying to prove something to himself, namely whether he can justify Gang Of Four's continued existence. And so it goes for Content in general, it's a little short of, well, content; the outer shell of GoF is there but the essence of the band is conspicuously absent (the band did always say that  "essence" was rare, after all).

With the best of GoF's work, Gill's jarring guitar lines and syncopations dictated the band's jerking and oddly danceable rhythms. The same applies to Content, on the pounding stomps of You Don't Have To Be Mad and You'll Never Pay For the Farm, or the reflective A Fruitfly In The Beehive. But all too often, Gill's fretwork feels like a signature piece, consigning him to rip it up in the opening seconds of a song, before new-boys McNeice and drummer Mark Heaney lay down a beat that never goes beyond serviceable. Somewhere far away, ousted drummer Hugo Burnham must be laughing away to himself.

On my review of Wire's Red Barked Tree, I remarked on how in touch Wire were with their former selves. In hindsight, I may have underestimated just what an asset that is to a band of such venerability.  The album is blighted by its laboured production - for all its apparent bluster and energy, the final product is oddly subdued - but even taking that aside, Content is the sound of a band desperately trying to rediscover  themselves. Does Content justify Gang of Four's existence? Just about; it's not a bad album by any means, better even than many might have expected after all these years. But equally, it's difficult to see just where the band go from here.

60/100