XTC fans (or non-): possible explanations of their appeal???

Best thing about XTC that people tend not to talk about: the performances tend to be amazing. Particularly around Drums and Wires: not only is Partridge a distinctive and engaging vocalist (the stutters and snorts on like “Scissor Man” and “Outside World” come out so well you almost don’t notice how odd they are), but as a band they just tear and swing, all casual, through some pretty acrobatic shifts (again, “Scissor Man”). (If they’d been playing something dark and heavy, my guess is that rock fans would look back at them as gods; but when you play giddy pop, people tend to read skill as just a given, or even a detriment.) The instrumental hot-performances faded away when they went into their pastoral studio-pop phase, obviously, but Partridge’s vox stayed as keen as ever.

Liking them around “Skylarking,” like everyone says, is just about enjoying mildly “sophisticated” pop songwriting and arrangement, something they do quite well and quite interestingly. (On that level there’s maybe a lean toward the kind of English “adult” pop songwriting that Bush and Gabriel are maybe part of --- I could imagine later-era Bush singing, say, “Another Satellite” --- but it’s so less theatrical and much more just “pop.”) And yes, it helps if you like the sort of giddy imaginary-pop vibe they’ve picked up from psychedelia. Just like lots of bands, from the Beatles to the Ladybug Transistor: this is sort of stage-musical dreamyland pop, a very knowing Apollonian construction of pop conventionals, not some real-world Dionysian thing. Which is why the Dukes of Stratosphear make a good shortcut to what the band’s all about: these are three guys who happily made up a corny alter-ego just to do really superb and only occasionally goofy pastiches of psychedelic pop.

For what it’s worth, I like XTC quite a lot, and I wouldn’t recommend English Settlement as a starting point. I’d recommend Drums and Wires and Skylarking.

And 'funk' isn't really something I've ever associated with them, in any phase.

uh, yes somebody did. and i just quoted them in my previous post. (and again, sasha frere jones has defended xtc to me as a funky band as well. i don't really care whether you think funk has nothing to do with xtc; some people clearly disagree with you. and i answered them.) and ALL of the bands relate to the music being discussed, or I would not have mentioned them. (and my memory IS crappy sometimes. though apparently not as crappy as your reading comprehension.)

But hey, go nuts. You tell those people (all one of them on this thread) that XTC is NOT funky! YEAH!

Two of which I mentioned on this thread before anybody else had, but since I was obviously just picking random bands out my ass who have NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH XTC (even though ALL of the bands I named have a fairly similar aesthetic to XTC, i.e.: jagged or ornate artiste pop songs with wacky lyrics, more or less -- plus almost all of them are British, as I recall, oops fuck you), I guess that's just a coincidence. (Hell, if saying XTC isn't funky offends people 'cause nobody would ever think to call XTC funky in the first place, I'll just say XTC never seemed very SMART to me, either. But now I guess people will tell me nobody ever thought XTC were smart! I can't win.)

yeah, that's totally what I think of when I hear the names Molly Hatchet, SuperTramp, and Dead or Alive. (clue: this is sarcasm) Carry on...

I think this gets at a lot of what I like about the XTC songs I like. I love the brief guitar "solos," if you can call them that, on a song like "Ten Feet Tall." Actually, it kind of reminds me of the solos you get on the first side of the Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground.

Much of the time I like them in spite of their quirkiness, which probably makes me less than a true XTC fan. I like them primarily for narrowly musical reasons (and because the fun things they do musically also move me), and because I do like many of the lyrics, at least in bits and pieces. The lyrics usually make plenty of sense to me, and on English Settlement, I like the way, for instance, "Yacht Dance" picks up the same themes as "Sense Working Overtime."

I don't know if I'd called them funky (and I am less and less sure I even know what funky means--I think I go for a different type of rhythm than what funk is about), but I think they are very strong rhythmically at times. It's not just a matter of melody.

spill it. Oh, Chuck, fwiw, Colin Moulding is a huge Free fan.

Smart? I don't know. I would like to see you argue your way out of saying "XTC aren't anal enough".

x-post

Speaking of relevant bands: Stump! I feel a grand convergence between A Fierce Pancake and like Black Sea / bits of Drums and Wires.

I think we can grant Chuck's point that XTC were never particularly funky, let it die, and instead focus on this: the words don't make sense? Whuh? If anything this band's main word-problem has been making a little too much sense.

I'm with Nitsuh, I couldn't disagree more - Partridge is a fan-fucking-tastic lyricist, and even their psyched-out imagery at least fits the music.

It *should* be what you think of when you hear Supertramp, since it's exactly what Supertramp (as influenced by late '60s Beatles as XTC, and with their best album the same year as *Drums and Wires*) did. Dead Or Alive and the other '80s MTV Brit dance bands I named (ABC, A Flock of Seagulls, Frankie Goes to Hollywood) evolved out of the dance oriented Brit new wave XTC were part of circa 1979, and all made it dancier and more propulsive. Molly Hatchet were mentioned as a parenthetical aside in the post expressly to suggest that artsy British pop was hardly the funkiest white pop music around during the time XTC were doing their most rhythmic work. So yeah, again, they all had something to do with the subject at hand. Sorry if I didn't lead you by the hand explaining that step by step the first time.

That's weird, I heard the same thing (on Skylarking) (while stoned) (the first song is called "Grass!"). Skylarking still feels like a big terrific musical to me, not least because the songs clearly describe a life cycle. (I've always wondered about the notes crediting Rundgren with the "sequencing concept" or something of that sort; clearly it went from the lyrics up!) (This is also why the substitution of "Dear God" bothers me --- not just because "Mermaid Smiled" is way way better but because that it completely alters the mood of the life cycle to put a moment of religious crisis in there instead.)

Another interesting reference point: Partridge vs. Costello. (Up through "10,000 Umbrellas" vs. The Juliet Letters!)

In fact, you could almost say their sense was working overtime! (But I couldn't.) (I do think dleone's "not anal enough" comment was pretty funny, though. And no, I can't make that argument, either.)

cavalcade of x-posts

re: robyn

A thousand pardons on Summer's Cauldron, yo. And I certainly don't forget "Sacrificial Bonfire"; I just always get distracted by "Dying" first. Colin's songs have an especially Muppetty quality that's sometimes just wrong (by the Apple Venuses he was turning into the High Llamas in a really bad way) and sometimes sweet -- Bonfire's on the way-good side.

I doubt I'm the only one that discovered them this way, but They Might Be Giants have a song called "XTC vs Adam Ant" and I was at the age where I was just starting to learn about music not on the radio and would check out literally any band I heard about. Also got into Adam Ant that way, but he is not as much a fave

about a year and a half ago a good friend of mine made a very passionate and long post on FB explaining why, "after 20 years of near constant music consumption," he'd concluded XTC was his favorite band ever, for all the reasons we know... i was in new york and about to go to Other Music so i picked up Mummer and The Big Express there. ended up being my last visit there before it closed.

the O&L radio tour is sweet. the way their guitars blend on Love on a Farmboy's Wages - oh man

https://youtu.be/cTtFTHI7Or0?t=20m13s

I doubt I'm sure I'm the only one that discovered them this way, but it was on the 1982 WOMAD benefit double album Music and Rhythm, which had a bunch of artists who played the first WOMAD festival and which I bought for the unreleased Peter Gabriel, Pete Townshend and Jon Hassell tracks. It also had "It's Nearly Africa," which I completely flipped out over.

Bought English Settlement a few weeks later and flipped out 14 more times (see, 'cause there's a total of 15 tracks). By the time Mummer came out a year later, I had bought every album and most of the singles, EPs and side projects (with a big thank you to the late lamented Venus Records on 8th St. in NYC).