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Nicky Wire: happy among the ghosts and flowers.
Nicky Wire
Intimism
BANDCAMP. DL
TITLED AFTER an art movement devoted to quotidian domestic scenes, Nicky Wire’s digital-only second solo album honours the interior foxholes we all retreat to. “Radio’s on, typewriting clicking,” notes Keeper Of The Flame, wherein Wire diagnoses a “lifelong affair with tunnel vision”. Intimism draws on ’80s indie’s classicist artisans: notably Ballad Of The Baby Blue’s Go-Betweens memor y dive, and Tactical Retreat, where Wire assumes the impassive cool of Pete Astor soliloquising on the wear y acquisition of wisdom. Amid much self-lacerating wit, some orch-pop flourish, piano boogaloo and two ‘Migraine’ jazz interludes, there are twin emotional peaks: White Musk’s Spectorist lustre – clarinet played by Wire’s daughter – and Contact Sheets, a bittersweet anthem to photographic memories right up there with R.E.M.’s Camera. It’s manic outside, but Intimism is a beautifully designed safe haven.