in any musical genre, and in 2011 it began accepting releases in any format or medium, not just "albums". In addition to the main all-genre list there are typically shorter lists of the best releases within selected genres as well. These year-in-review issues have been called Rewind since 1997. Like the magazine itself, The Wires critics' polls have garnered a reputation for their unconventional, eclectic selections. Guardian columnist Maggoty Lamb commented in 2007 that The Wire has "the annual best-of list most likely to single out an ensemble called Kiss the Anus of the Black Cat as having made 'one of the most interesting records of the year'." When the magazine named James Ferraro's vaporwave album Far Side Virtual its 2011 Release of the Year, Eric Grandy remarked in Seattle Weekly that it was "[n]o surprise that willfully obscurantist British rag the Wires Best of 2011 list is topped by James Ferraro's winking Windows '97 soft-rock hellscape ... and further ranges from the Beach Boys' Smile Sessions to Laurel Halo and Hype Williams." Reception Over the years, The Wire has received both praise and derision. Positive commentary about the magazine has often referred to its diverse range of coverage and unique status as a longstanding publication devoted to music outside the mainstream. In 2005 the writer Bill Martin called it an "invaluable resource" and said "there is no other English-language magazine today of comparable scope." On the occasion of the magazine's 400th issue in 2017, Josh Baines of Noisey praised the magazine for "examining—in the kind of detail that puts most other publications to shame—sound and music from every conceivable angle" and "treating boundary-pushing music with diligence, care, and above all else, enthusiasm". The same year, designer Adrian Shaughnessy said that he regarded The Wire and the British film magazine Sight & Sound as the only two magazines that "remain unmissable"; he said both publications had "serious writing at their core", which "is never softened to make it 'accessible' to a wider audience," and he said both were still "stonking good reads that have introduced me to hours of pleasure that I might otherwise have missed." Unfavourable assessments of the magazine have often derided its avant-garde sensibility as pretentious, self-important and inaccessible. Gail Brennan at The Sydney Morning Herald opined in 1993 that The Wire "covers a surprising range of music while bringing a narrow and contrived 'punk' attitude to