The Mire

Somehow it slipped through my radar, but the monthly music bible otherwise known as Wire underwent a recent website renovation that included the launch of the weblog Mire. It's just what you would expect from a magazine with the self-described intent to "wage war on the mundane and the mediocre"—in the first few months there have been posts on the degeneration of the vocabulary of art criticism, a link to a rare Dopplereffekt live set, and the only accurate review of the new Portishead album I have seen anywhere online (there's a similarly scathing companion piece in the latest print issue), to wit:

As for the new album, it screams out lack of ideas: devoid of the vinyl crackle that might have given it some relation to the 'hauntological now' of Burial or Philip Jeck, I can only hear it as clapped out coffee table miserabilism ten years past its sell-by date.

As they say at Boomkat, who gave the album a characteristically hyperbolic review (they have to sell records after all): Essential.