Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	77/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
BBC	(favourable)
Robert Christgau
musicOMH
New Zealand Herald	(4/5)
NME	(8/10)
Pitchfork	(8.0/10)
PopMatters
Rave Magazine
The Independent

Red Barked Tree is the twelfth studio album by the English post-punk band Wire, digitally released on 20 December 2010, and as a CD on 10 January 2011. Featuring eleven tracks covering a diverse range of musical styles, the record was well received by critics, who found the record representing the "essence of their best work", covering "virtually all aspects of Wire's varied history" to create "a stylistic best-of composed of new material".

The departure of founding member Bruce Gilbert in 2006 left Wire as a trio composed of Colin Newman (vocals, guitar, various), Graham Lewis (bass, vocals, various) and Robert Grey (drums). Having released Object 47 in 2008, the band had originally intended to record Red Barked Tree in December 2009, at Githead and Wire soundman Frankie Lievaart's studio in Rotterdam. When Lievaart proved unable to trace, having left the country with Gogol Bordello, the only alternative would have been Newman's swim ~ studio, but as Newman explained to emusic.com, this would not have been suitable: "I can produce fairly decent-sounding mixes here [at swim ~], but for physical recording, if you're going to record drums in a nice room, first of all you've got to have a nice room, and someone who knows how to record drums. If you're going to record a whole band, you've got to have the right place to do it." Their preferred option not being available, the band therefore decided to book four days in a commercial studio in London, which put the recording date back to February 2010.

Newman had written some songs for the album: "My method of writing songs, which I hadn't used for 30 years, is to write them on acoustic guitar. They take an average of five minutes each. If it's not written in five minutes, it's not going to get written. I'd sit on the couch, play a bit, if I had some words from Graham, jam 'em in, record it to my iPhone, then I'd present a bunch of songs to Rob and Graham. Rob said [derisively], 'It sounds like the '70s' and Graham said, 'I hate acoustic guitar,' so I knew we were onto a winner. That's so classic Wire."

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Wikipedia