My Top 1000 Songs #859: Kidney Bingos

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Wire's unexpected 80s return after disbanding in the wake of one of the all-time-great three-record runs was a mixed bag. 1987's The Ideal Copy was pretty great, with some stand-out tracks that hold up today, but the records that followed saw some diminishing returns. 1988's A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck was uniformly pleasant, an atypically light, amiable record that also lacked excitement. But it's single, "Kidney Bingos," was pretty great, a track I'd be throwing onto mixtapes long after I'd relegated the LP to the far corners of my collection.

I can't say the song has any particular emotional resonance, a seeming splatter of lyrical gibberish, yet that chiming, echoing guitar, and a remarkably friendly delivery, not to mention building up to an exuberant, anthemic climax, just make the song feel like an old pal, a warm embrace from a band that could be doing far edgier work but just wants to hang out a bit.

Live in the studio 2011: