Wire Keeps the Punk Groove Going

Punk rock is old. It’s an institution, its underground cachet long ago wiped clean by corporate raiding of its culture. But at its best the music remains vital, a sound that is hard, focused and undeniable. At the root of that sound is Wire.

The kind of influence the British quartet has had on underground music since the late 1970s could be measured by its audience Thursday at the El Rey Theater. The show wasn’t a sellout, but standing amid the crowd were a variety of local rockers, from Mike Watt to Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson to Jason Falkner, all there to see Wire’s first U.S. tour in a decade.

Like the band’s charged, minimalist songs, the hourlong concert was fast-paced and ended abruptly. While Wire drew very little from its classic 1977 album “Pink Flag,” the songs it did play never lacked energy, suggesting that Wire remained creative right up until its final studio recordings in the early ‘90s.

Some of that later material stretched beyond the band’s earliest chord patterns, but it was always tightly wound, both machine-like and evocative.

Fittingly, Wire’s four members (led by singer-guitarist Colin Newman) all dressed in black T-shirts and performed without any semblance of show-biz (elaborate lighting, special effects, etc.). There was hardly anything at all on stage, other than a commitment to a seminal punk groove that remains immune to the passing of time.