Why+The+Wires – Flame Failures LP - one of the corners has minor wear from shipping to Stickfigure

Why+The+Wires – Flame Failures LP - one of the corners has minor wear from shipping to Stickfigure

Since forming in Ithaca, NY in 2008, why+the+wires has been delivering a dynamic rock sound that gets more focused with every album. The songs are tight-wound, angular affairs, moody yet melodic. Rough-throated gospels, shambling shout-alongs, insistent rave-ups and brooding instrumental stretches. Their influences are best pinpointed by geography: San Diego, Chicago, Washington, D.C. Comparisons have ranged from Hot Snakes and Sweep the Leg Johnny to Archers of Loaf and June of 44.

Over the last six years why+the+wires has released three albums, beginning with 2009’s Lost Lighthouses, a somber drone-drenched introduction that was enlivened with accordion, saxophone and violin. By 2011’s Telegraph Flats the volume was increasing and the song structures had splintered. All These Dead Astronauts, released on Rorschach Records in 2012, shed the violin altogether as the group pared down to a four-piece and ramped up the intensity while also adding a dose of mathy intricacy.

Flame Failures reins in that mathy meandering, clenches the muscles, files down the teeth. It is the band’s most ear-blasted, urgent album yet. The songs are set in dank basements, abandoned movie theaters and quarantine tents. They are populated by the walking wounded: epileptic kleptomaniacs, anxious citizens, noise addicts serenaded by radio static. It is soundtrack for those who have been ravaged by reality, depressed by history, the beaten but not quite broken; those of us who have not surrendered yet.