A stray single that put a full stop on the initial period of Colin Newman’s solo releases, ‘We Means We Starts’ followed shortly after his third album, ‘Not To’ in early 1982, but was not included on the album. Though sonically it shared a lot of the same DNA as the long player, it seems to have been put together by a different grouping. ‘Not To’ had included a good number of songs that Wire had first performed live but never recorded or released, so it inevitably had a great deal of comparisons to Wire from the off. In particular, the more overtly ‘pop’ side was always bandied about as if this were the sole preserve of Colin Newman – despite his previous solo album, ‘Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish’ straying into the kind of outer fringes sonic areas that erstwhile colleagues Gilbert and Lewis had been mapping as their own. Having said that, there’s no doubt that this ‘poppier’ side was in the sights with this album’s sound.
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