Drums and Wires is the third studio album by the English rock band XTC, released 17 August 1979 on Virgin Records.

The album was their first issued in the United States and their first recorded with guitarist Dave Gregory, who had replaced keyboardist Barry Andrews earlier in 1979.

It features a mix of pop, art rock, new wave and punk styles with much rhythmic interplay between XTC's two guitarists.

Bassist Colin Moulding's dissatisfaction with XTC's "quirky" reputation inspired the group to take a more accessible approach, starting with the non-album single "Life Begins at the Hop".

Drums and Wires was recorded in four weeks at the newly built Town House studio in London with producer Steve Lillywhite and engineer Hugh Padgham, who were beginning to develop their signature gated reverb production technique, as demonstrated on the album opener and lead single "Making Plans for Nigel".

Frontman and guitarist Andy Partridge conceptualised Jill Mumford's cover artwork, which depicts the band logo forming the outline of a face.

"Making Plans for Nigel" reached number 17 on the UK Singles Chart and marked the band's commercial breakthrough.

[2] Rather than hiring a replacement keyboardist, Dave Gregory of the Swindon covers band Dean Gabber and His Gaberdines was invited to join as a second guitarist.

[1] Impressed by the work of Steve Lillywhite, XTC contacted him to produce their third album with a drum sound that would "knock your head off".

[1] In the 1998 XTC biography Song Stories, Partridge states that the band hired Lillywhite based on his work for Siouxsie and the Banshees' The Scream (1978).

I simply couldn't continue grinding out old blues clichés and power chords, so I began to think more in terms of the songs as the masters and the instruments as the servants.

[15] Musically, the album was described by Paste critic Lizzie Manno as featuring "a bold, drum-centric", "polychromatic", and "coltish" pop style, with "a skittish punk energy and fierce grooves".

[16] In the words of Chris Dahlen from Pitchfork, the band pursued "pure pop disguised as jittery post-punk, all played with teeth-chattering intensity",[17] while Milenio writer Ernesto Herrera called the album a representative record of new wave.

[19] Writing for Ultimate Classic Rock in 2019, critic Michael Galluci said the album is "45 or so minutes of art-rock" and argued that, "even today, Drums and Wires sounds like an unconventional work among the period's angular, arty and evolving New Wave.

[27] ”Outside World", a frenetic number built on manic riffing from Gregory and Partridge, and a muscular bass-line by Moulding was considered as a possible single early on during the recording process.

[28] "Scissor Man" is Partridge's attempt at an adult morality tale, based on "The Story of the Thumb-Sucker" from the German children's book Struwwelpeter, and features a dub-influenced coda.

"Life Begins at the Hop" was not included on the original UK LP due to industry convention in the 1960s and the 1970s,[36] although the track appeared on some international variants, either as an addition or substitution.

[8] In July, music videos directed by Russell Mulcahy were filmed for "Making Plans for Nigel" and "Life Begins at the Hop".

[8] Virgin requested Lillywhite to remix "Real by Reel", "When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty", "Helicopter" and "Outside World" as potential follow-up singles, but the new mixes were rejected by the group.

[51] Instead, the band recorded "Wait Till Your Boat Goes Down", a reggae-influenced Partridge song with production by Phil Wainman of Bay City Rollers fame.

[52] Drums and Wires received favourable reviews, and according to biographer Chris Twomey, was "widely acknowledged in the music business".

"[56] The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote: "My reservations about this tuneful but willfully eccentric pop are ideological.

"[53] Rolling Stone's Jon Pareles called the album XTC's "least-dissonant" and identified the band's "current obsession" as "Philip Glass Steve Reich-style static harmony, and their favorite complicated game is to stalemate pop progressions with immobile arrangements.

The aimless energy of the first two albums is focused into a cohesive statement with a distinctive voice that retains their clever humor, quirky wordplay, and decidedly British flavor.

"[13] Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune cited the album as "among the more accomplished records of its time-edgy, brisk and sarcastic, with pop gems such as 'Making Plans for Nigel' and 'Life Begins at the Hop.

'"[58] Ultimate Classic Rock's Michael Galluci said it was XTC's "first great album" and the first in a "string of musically ambitious records".

Contributor Chris Dahlen wrote: "Dozens of other contemporary bands were more extreme in every way—angrier, more danceable, more adventurous or primitive or whatever—but this triple-jointed sock hop out-charms them all.

[11] Partridge felt that he was losing the band's leadership and attempted to exert more authority in the group, calling himself "a very benevolent dictator.

[38] "Complicated Game" served as the title of a 2016 book by Partridge and journalist Todd Bernhardt, which contains discussions between the two on various XTC songs.

[68] All tracks are written by Andy Partridge, except where notedThis album had a large number of sequencing variations worldwide in its first few years of release.