Hiding behind the unprepossessing artwork of Send a Message is one of the best punk records to come out of nowhere since Guitar Romantics by the Exploding Hearts a few years back. High Tension Wires—not much more than a fuck band from Texas—prove that they actually do build them like this anymore, even as the genre charitably called punk has elsewhere become this decade's hair metal. At worst, you could accuse High Tension Wires of redundancy: its simulation of 1977 is good enough to spook a horse, but redundancy seldom comes with hooks like these. At best, Send a Message apes the sounds of a handful of bands that roamed the Earth 30 years ago, but with stunning aplomb. And at 19 successively impressive minutes, the whole affair is not only fast but also tighter than a bulldog's nuts on ice. Brings to mind the Briefs? Sure-except those guys have an in-house graphics team that spends millions of dollars a minute on making everything look… punk. Send a Message, on the other hand, is illustrated with a single blurry image of a Japanese man sweeping the floor. It would be foolish to suggest that a Japanese man is the difference between a good punk band and a great one, but I ask you to consider it anyway. These boys apparently don't care to bludgeon us with the obvious, hinting at a more wayward intelligence behind the Dickies impressions and Pistols lifts. Which would explain why this is on Dirtnap. Anyhow, there's not a single stinky track on Send a Message, and, even better still, no fake English accents.

Georgia Straight, June 2005