Senses Working Poll-vertime: The XTC Poll Nominations and Discussions thread

I'm nearly done... beginning to think I put my ballots together better when under pressure!

60 song ballot sent.

I'm on the road today, let me send it in tomorrow, please!

Sent!!

Just sent mine. Hope I made it!

Is there time for straggling? I drove my family nuts by listening to the entire discography up to O&L on the drive to my parents' place for thxgvg - still need to put a bit of time in with the last 3 albums & misc trax (no Warbles, they're just not canon AFAIC)... What's the drop-deadline?

Its....... now

👍

All right, threw it together. Hope it makes it in. Thanks for doing this!

I've just realised that The Big Express will be a 30 year old puppy on Wednesday!

Such a weird album

Hammer goes down
Brakes all scream
Me and a couple of empty carriages
Slide down hill still
Next stop bad dreamsville

Ouch, bet Colin and Dave felt that one.

Train Running Low has one of those lovely self-contained middle eights that could have been the basis of a fantastic song on it's own right.

AP: (imitates whiny reporter) "And you've got to tell us, are Dave and Colin the 'empty carriages'? That's what we want to know."

TB: (laughs) Well, you know, quite frankly that question is justified, because I was listening today to the demo on Fuzzy Warbles, Vol. 3, and one of the few differences in the lyrics between the demo and the finished product is that on the demo you say "me and bunch of empty carriages." On the finished product, you say, "me and a couple of empty carriages." Given that there were three of you in the band at that point, the interpretation is understandable.

AP: At the risk of sounding like a real shit, I must have thought that I was pulling Dave and Colin along, or that we're all on the same ride together. If I go off the rails, so does their career!

http://chalkhills.org/articles/XTCFans20090614.html

And yeah, 'Train Running Low On Soul Coal' has an incredible middle eight... I'm sure I've said this before, but Andy Partridge really knows how to use the middle eight. There's so many XTC tracks where the middle eight just kicks the song up a gear.

I don't know to what extent Wasp Star is Pro Tooled -- parts of it sound like it -- but is it heretical to say I prefer this pop album to Nonsuch and the beloved Skylarking? "Wounded Horse" is painful though.

I mean, "Playground," "Stupidly Happy," "The Wheel and the Maypole" -- three of Partridge's best hooks, melodies, and lyrics

I've never been a fan of 'Wounded Horse'. Wasp Star has its moments (a couple of which made my ballot), but to me (on the whole) it definitely doesn't compare to Nonsuch or Skylarking.

Skylarking is spotty. They don't have a perfect album -- not that it matters.

All of their albums have their supporters and critics... for example I understand that there's a fair amount of XTC fans that don't rate The Big Express, but quite a fair amount of the album made my ballot!

Skylarking without "dear god" is p much perfect

Yeah, I always listen to Skylarking in its original configuration, with 'Mermaid Smiled' on it instead of 'Dear God'. Although, on the US version, the transition from 'Dear God' into 'Dying' is kinda nice, if I recall.

My #1 will be Respectable Street, but beyond that I'm clueless. I need to sit down with all of these albums and do some homework.

One thing that will be interesting about this poll for me is the placing of the Colin tracks.

I never understood why they took off Mermaid Smiled from Skylarking, it's such a beautiful song and one of my favourites on the album. Big Day is probably my least favourite song on there.

'Mermaid Smiled' is sublime when the percussion kicks in. I love the lyrics to 'Big Day', but it's far from my favourite track on there.

Yeah I love that bit too. It could be their prettiest song.

Without doing an actual statistical analysis, my impression was that O&L had the highest percentage of songs that made my ballot. Listening to it in sequence with the others, it felt to me like the brightest, most fluid realization of all their intentions to that point.

Shit, I just realized I didn't even consider the Dukes tracks for inclusion. "Vanishing Girl" would have been top 20, for sure.

I was surprised to find that Oranges & Lemons had the most on my ballot with 6 out of 50 tracks. My 2 favorites, English Settlement and Skylarking, only had 5 each in the top 50, but 3 from each made the top 20--the highest O&L track placed at #21.

Not a lot from Oranges & Lemons or English Settlement made it onto mine.

Only 1 track from Apple Venus made my list, which is probably tantamount to heresy on ILM.

I don't know to what extent Wasp Star is Pro Tooled -- parts of it sound like it -- but is it heretical to say I prefer this pop album to Nonsuch and the beloved Skylarking? "Wounded Horse" is painful though.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, October 12, 2014 2:18 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I would say that's pretty heretical...

Moulding's Skylarking songs especially are so much better than his contributions to Wasp Star.

The thing I love about the polls is the chance to revisit a catalog. It would have been interesting to rate the albums. I had never warmed to The Big Express or Mummer, and while I came away with a greater appreciation of Mummer, I'm now convinced The Big Express is nothing more than a transitional record and the only all-around dud in the catalog.

I had the most tracks from English Settlement and the Dukes (5 each) with Skylarking, Black Sea and Mummer just behind at 4 each. The others all got 2 or 3 except for drums and wires and nonsuch which only got 1 and white music, go 2 and wasp star which got 0 (I just haven't heard those records in too long and wasn't motivated to revisit.)

Albums that changed in my estimation because of this poll revisit:

I like Mummer a lot more than I thought. I like apple Venus a lot LOT more than last listen-- before, I was hung up on the use of sampled orchestral instruments pretending to be real, now it doesn't bother me anymore and one of the tracks which does this most blatantly made my top 10.

Nonsuch still dud for me, the dead compressed guitars, the second string lyrics, the mid-tempo-itis.

Black Sea and English Settlement have now switched places as my #1 and #2 XTC LPs. I have to just own the fact that I'm one of those corny English settlement people.

Still need to hear transistor blast someday.

I guess I missed the deadline; that's fine, I really just wanted to vote for "Battery Brides" because it's a fun OMD prototype.

If its any consolation Alfred my wife's favorite is also Wasp Star, altho yeah this is a fairly unusual opinion.

I consider Skylarking their perfect record. Apple Venus is close.

I also consider skylarking their perfect record, but it's my 3rd favorite

Euler if you send me yr ballot before tomorrow morning I will count it

I wanted to try and represent every record but in the end I had to cut my favorites from White Music and Go2 because I couldn't justify keeping them over my 4th or 5th faves from some of the later albums.

^and you had to limit the size of your ballot why?

Guess I didn't have to but 40 was hard enough for me...

OK! 33 ballots in, votes have been tabulated, just have to get the images together and then we will roll out the results

232(!) songs received votes

I take that back, 196 songs received votes (stupid text formatting)

what with the absence of a limit on how many songs you could vote for I was trying to work out how many songs were eligible, I gave up, but it's a lot:

http://chalkhills.org/reelbyreal/i_song.html

slightly disappointed there wasn't at least one indomitable voter who ranked every song on that list

there were a couple 100 entry ballots, most hovered around the 20-40 range

Didn't vote because my favorites are all the obvious songs, but looking forward to the rollout

yeah, me too

I was tempted to do a 50 track + monsterballot, but I found it too hard so I decided to just pick 20 songs I liked and not make any attempt to be comprehensive, aside from the top 3 or 4 there's probably another 16 songs I could have substituted and been equally happy/unhappy with