Read & Burn is the first serious, in-depth appraisal of Wire, one of the most influential British bands to emerge during the punk era. If Wire were briefly a punk band, however, it was largely by historical accident. Despite the fact that they had complicated and transformed that category almost before they'd begun, they seem never to have quite escaped the label. Be it punk, post-punk, or art-punk, critics have clung onto the p-word in an attempt to capture the essence of Wire's innovative uniqueness. But their story -- which honours punk's original yet quickly forgotten commitment to the new -- is one of constant remaking and remodelling, one that stubbornly resists reduction to a single identity. As a result, the group's projects have always balanced uneasily between artistic endeavour and the need for commercial sustainability, played out against the backdrop of the musicians' perennially complex creative relationships. Tracing Wire's diverse output from 1977 up until the present, Read & Burn seeks to do justice to their highly influential and restlessly inventive body of work by developing a sustained critical account of their shifting approaches. It combines analysis and interpretation with perspective drawn from exclusive interviews with past and present members of the band. "A meaty treatise by the guy who already wrote a 150 page monograph on Pink Flag for the 33⅓ series....Wilson Neate's book is incisive, insightful and full of fascinating information." --Simon Reynolds, Blissblog (author of Rip It Up and Start Again and Retromania ). "[Wire] have long deserved a decent book and Read & Burn is a thorough and readable biography....An excellent book." --David Quantick, Q magazine (UK). "Concise, informed prose, writing with incisiveness, authority and engaging enthusiasm." --Keith Moliné, The Wire magazine (UK). "This is [an] exceedingly well-written and very passionate take on the band's story and output....Neate's personal take on any one Wire album, era, or idea only encourages discerning readers to go back into the stacks, listen anew, and judge or reconsider for themselves; I can't remember the last music book that sent me scurrying to play so many sounds again with fresh and eager ears." --Jim DeRogatis, host of WBEZ's Sound Opinions ; author of Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic. "[An] impressive balance of reverence for its subject with an unvarnished warts-and-all portrayal....Fans of the art-punk trailblazers in any of their incarnations will find more than enough of interest in this thorough yet readable document....Seeded with a healthy dose of photos, Read & Burn is a remarkable value for its incongruously low price and leaves few stones unturned. It's hardly designed to win new fans, but for the faithful it's the Ideal Copy." --Glen Sarvady, Stomp and Stammer magazine (USA). "You could suggest that what Wilson Neate doesn't know about Wire isn't worth knowing - but, on reflection, there isn't anything he doesn't know about them....Neate presents an absorbing, unsparing insight into the working practices of a band saddled from birth with an inappropriate 'punk' epithet, yet whose actions, utterances and structure nevertheless resound with intimations of conflict, negation and defiance....It will have you scurrying back to the albums." --Oregano Rathbone, Record Collector magazine (UK). "Those assuming a Wire biography might be a little dry are in for a surprise, for this is a fascinating investigation into the singular, influential group....Emotionally engaging....[A] compelling study of group psychology." --Mike Barnes, Mojo magazine (UK). "One of the best music biographies I've read. I loved it. It's both thorough and funny, and really, really well written. I could feel those individuals in the room - it does a fantastic job of capturing their forthrightness." --Ivo Watts-Russell, This Mortal Coil ; founder of 4AD Records . Wilson Neate is the author of Pink Flag (Continuum 2008), a book on Wire's first album. Pages: 432