Wire: The Ideal Copy (1987)

Wire were one of those bands I discovered only after the fact. My immersion in college radio in the mid-80s inevitably led me back to Wire, one of the original UK punk pioneers. I quickly fell in love with their majestic 1977-1979 three-album run (well, four if you count Colin Newman's terrific 1980 solo album, A-Z, which sounds like the natural follow-up to 1979's 154 ), and was sad to discover the band was no more.

So it was a real treat when they resurfaced in 1986 with a brief EP, followed sho...