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Document & Eyewitness 1979-1980 Image
Metascore
63

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The reissued live album for the post-punk band includes rehearsal recordings, singles, and B-sides.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 10
  2. Negative: 1 out of 10
  1. Dec 10, 2014
    80
    The rehearsal takes are probably the real draw (aside from the customary production corrections and sonic scrub all reissues get) for those already tuned to the album’s contrary wavelength, and they do not disappoint.
  2. Magnet
    Sep 18, 2014
    80
    The linear song structures, full of droning, atonal, repetitive music, shrieking vocals and skewed tempos, still make this music as challenging today as it was in 1978, although some of the songs now sound remarkably normal. [No. 113, p.61]
  3. The Wire
    Dec 2, 2014
    70
    Though it may not feel exactly pleasurable, it most definitely connects. [Sep 2014, p.72]
  4. Aug 25, 2014
    60
    The main event could have been bloody genius. It isn’t, but it remains fascinating.
  5. Aug 25, 2014
    60
    How you find Document And Eyewitness will depend on your appetite for artistic bloody mindedness. Still, if you’re a fan of Wire, you’ll know it can be moreish.
  6. Aug 25, 2014
    60
    Wire never wanted to be a satisfying band, yet they somehow became one--which leaves the otherwise bold impulse behind Document and Eyewitness curiously inconclusive.
  7. Sep 5, 2014
    30
    In all honesty, the album’s listenability has not improved with age. There are 34 songs on this new version of Document and Eyewitness and, even if a number of the live tracks clock in at less than two minutes, the sheer relentlessness of the freeform, out-of-tune, semi-suicide mission wears you down by the time you are only halfway through.

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