Album: Wire, Red Barked Tree (Pink Flag)

There's something jarring about hearing 56-year-old Colin Newman spit a couplet as snotty and adolescent as "Fuck off out of my face/ You take up too much space".

But too often the 12th album by Wire allows you to relax into a slumber. It has its moments: the rocket-fuelled "Two Minutes" and the quasi-psychedelic title track, and nobody could call it bad, but it suffers in comparison with the current vitality of fellow post-punkers The Fall. This is just another competent rock record in hock to the band Wire used to be.