TS: XTC's Black Sea vs. English Settlement

you guys are suggesting some weird pretty non-rock-y stuff imho. I don't think Tarfumes is entirely wrong that they ditched the aesthetic of Black Sea for the most part - the slashing guitars, the stuttering rhythms, the frenetic energy, etc. they didn't really go there again. some of the stuff on Big Express maybe comes closest.

Black Sea is the way that it is because that particular line-up of the band (Partridge/Gregory/Moulding/Chambers) had such an undeniable chemistry as a unit and were playing together a lot as a live band, so you get an energy and urgency on Black Sea that they couldn't replicate on their post-Settlement studio records, no matter how good the drummers they used on those recordings were/are. That, and Partridge seemed to want to move away from that particular approach to recording/style of music on the records starting with Settlement.

yup to all that

only "No Thugs" comes close to rocking out as hard - "Wake Up" feels a little more stitched and calculated than anything on Black Sea. obviously not really a knock on later XTC but they definitely lost the "live" sound pretty suddenly afterwards.

Yeah, definitely agree regarding 'Wake Up'... there's a rigidity in the way that the track has been recorded that contrasts with the live band feel on Black Sea. Not to knock the track, because I like it a lot, but you can definitely tell it was a studio creation rather than the result of a band playing together.

I wouldn't describe 'Across This Antheap' as "rocking", either.

Compared to, say, anything on albums including and after Nonesuch it does.

I mean, it ain't Motorhead, but there's a bit of edge there.

I remember being disappointed the first time I heard Wasp Star because it seemed like they were trying to do a stripped down, live band feel again, only with some kinda stodgy, un-rocking songs.

Had Dave Gregory split by that point?

I pretty much abandoned ship after Nonesuch.

Yeah, I think he left when they were partway through preparing Apple Venus vol 1, he'd already done some arrangements for it, and didn't contribute at all to Wasp Star IIRC. Possibly why it sounds relatively sloppy by XTC standards.

Compared to, say, anything on albums including and after Nonesuch it does.

― Alex in NYC, Tuesday, August 27, 2013 10:08 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd agree with that, but we're not comparing it with what came after Nonsuch!

sloppy?! not really a term I associate with this band. like, ever.

Well like I say relatively sloppy, by their standards. But maybe 'sloppy' isn't the right word, i don't know.

Like Frogbs said, after English Settlement they didn't have that live band sound anymore, but all the albums had this lush, glossy, ultra-precise 80s production. And then Wasp Star didn't really have the live band feel or the glossy production?

Here's what David Gregory played on Apple Venus...

Easter Theatre: mellotron, acoustic guitar, keyboard programming
Frivolous Tonight: piano, synths, Mellotron, backing vocals
Greenman: keyboard programming, synth
Your Dictionary: piano, cello charts
I Can't Own Her: piano, synths
Harvest Festival: piano
Fruit Nut: synths, acoustic & electric guitars, organ, mellotron

Partridge did quite a fair bit of 'string arranging' on Apple Venus (as can he heard on his original demos for the album).

Gregory wasn't involved in recording Wasp Star.

Ah, I didn't realise he'd played that much on Apple Venus, I'd thought he left not long after they started recording it, and sort of already had one foot out of the door for quite a while before that. I think I remember in one of the books about the band Gregory talking about hearing 'Playground' for the first time and cringing, he didn't like the arrangement or recording and felt that the band was suffering for his absence? I think that was gist of what he said, anyway.

Black Sea is the way that it is because that particular line-up of the band (Partridge/Gregory/Moulding/Chambers) had such an undeniable chemistry as a unit and were playing together a lot as a live band, so you get an energy and urgency on Black Sea that they couldn't replicate on their post-Settlement studio records, no matter how good the drummers they used on those recordings were/are. That, and Partridge seemed to want to move away from that particular approach to recording/style of music on the records starting with Settlement.

― Dog Man Star took a suck on a pill... (Turrican), Tuesday, August 27, 2013 5:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this is pretty much what I was getting at.

And it's not that I don't like any post-Black Sea XTC, and some of my favorite XTC is their least rocking ("Grass," for one). But the agitated dynamic of those musicians in that format was gone. What replaced it was sometimes better, sometimes not.

Yup, it would definitely have been interesting to see how Chambers would have handled the Apple Venus material!

They did crank it up a few times after Black Sea (add to the list "Funk Pop a Roll," "Reign of Blows," "Garden of Earthly Delights," "Merely a Man," "Crocodile"), but never for more than a song or two per album, and none of it has the abandon of Black Sea.

And I'm convinced that the reason Wasp Star sounds so unfinished is the absence of Dave Gregory.

I can appreciate the arguments ppl are making in favor on BS, but ES is just on a totally different level for me. I really like all the songs people complain about in this thread, and LOVE the rest. Something about the production really works for me, it shimmers timelessly whereas Black Sea just rocks a la 1980 wiry postpunk. IMO.

^^this

The problem with Wasp Star isn't sloppiness, it's that it sounds like a bunch of demos. For all the flak this band gets for having fussy arrangements (a charge I would agree with sometimes), going stripped down on Wasp Star really didn't do them favors. And that could be because of no Gregory, yeah.

The problem with Wasp Star isn't sloppiness, it's that it sounds like a bunch of demos

In fact, it doesn't sound at all like the outstanding unreleased demos from Andy's "Fuzzy Warbles" series. If it had stuff like "Sonic Boom", "Ship Trapped In The Ice" and "The Bland Leading The Bland" on it, it would've been an excellent album. But it's got Andy's worst song ever, "The Man Who Murdered Love", among other very, very weak tracks. It doesn't sound like demos, it sounds like poor songwriting. (I'll rep for Colin's last good song, "Boarded Up" though.)

I never checked out those demos, didn't realize there was something there worth checking out heh. I think about half of the songs on Wasp Star would have been improved with better arrangements - "In Another Life", "Stupidly Happy", "Wounded Horse". The songwriting is on the weaker side, true, but the arrangements sound like they were dashed off quick, like they went with the first idea they had rather than trying different approaches. Not a fan of "Boarded Up", but at least that's a case where the bare arrangement suits the material.

Man, I don't get the hate for "Melt the Guns" at all. I have no problem with the lyrics or their sentiment, but that aside, it's a fantastic piece of music. Very proto-Animal Collective - is that why?

It's just that it's so damn repetitive.

I like guns but it's a good piece of music.

I don't like because the chorus is dogshit

IMO it's a standard-issue issue example of overly irritating/quirky Partridge/XTC

Yeah, now that I am listening to it, it's got good things going on but it has bad things going on too (like the excessive Partridge quirk). Hadn't listened to it for a while. Chorus is more neutral than negative for me though.

The opening riff/progression is weak in the first place. Allows for all the XTC cliches. That's basically the entire song.

This has probably been touched on already and is nothing new but jesus, English Settlement is way too long.

I know there's sequencing issues touched on already but....a little of Andy Partridge (as good as he is at his best) goes a long way.

So the "Black Sea" demos on the new deluxe release are mostly uninteresting and sound more like rough mixes. The 'early version' of "Towers Of London" is a couple of minutes longer and the 'unused single remix' of "Rocket From A Bottle" sound almost the same.

The most interesting stuff is the unreleased material: Pearl, Holding The Baby, Monkeys In Human Skin Suits, Spy In Space, Walking To Work, Jumping The Gap, and Ban The Bomb. They're fun to hear though nothing as crucial as stuff found on the Fuzzy Warbles series. With the release of these there's very few tracks I know about that haven't shown up officially or online.

Pearl has always been a favourite, I enjoyed the new mix too. But yeah, I think most everything is out there now between bootlegs, the old cassette releases, fuzzy warbles and the reissues, all that remains are the 3295642015986 songs that AP has left unfinished on a hard drive in his shed.

I'm guessing that it would be such a shame if he didn't finish some of those.

Doesn't his shed have its own thread?

Holy shit, I think this is the only live recording of "Melt the Guns" out there. Uploaded 5 months ago. Incredible set

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv9dXo9-zrA

XTC
Paradiso
Amsterdam, Netherlands
March 8, 1982

Soundboard pre-fm version

Andy Partridge was only 10 days away from his stage fright breakdown in Paris.

01. Runaways
02. Jason And The Argonauts
03. Melt The Guns
04. Snowman
05. Ball And Chain
06. No Thugs In Our House
07. Senses Working Overtime
08. All Along The Watchtower
09. No Language In Our Lungs
10. Towers Of London
11. Making Plans For Nigel
12. Living Through Another Cuba
13. Generals And Majors
14. Real By Reel
15. Sgt. Rock (Is going To Help Me)
16. Life Begins At The Hop (With Hans Devente on Backing Vocals)

Not recorded / missing are the first three songs, played that evening: Bushman President (tape); Respectable Street, Burning With Optimism's Flames.

The Quietus: 'English Settlement' turns 40

good excuse to listen

Great article

It's a very good article, but

Certainly, nobody talks about what a good single album English Settlement might have made.

I'd say the only good song left off the 10 track single LP version is "Yacht Dance", and some of the excluded tracks ("Leisure", "Down in the Cockpit") are terrible, good riddance.

yeah that bit made me raise an eyebrow too, people in fact talk about that all the time. though tbf it's more of a "had enough material for 3 sides" sort of double

had they replaced Leisure and Cockpit with Tissue Tigers & Blame the Weather it would be just about perfect

Drop some of the more irritating finger-pointing Andy Partridge material and we're talking.

I love "Leisure", "Down in the Cockpit", and "Knuckle Down", which I often see people single out as a weak track. It's such a good album, hard for me to cut anything, though the b-sides frogbs mentioned would have been great additions too. Even "Fly on the Wall", a track I used to skip, has grown on me

Some of the irritating finger-pointing Andy material (Melt The Guns, No Thugs) is my favourite, and I wouldn’t have them off the album for anything.

Very good article. A quibble: the writer’s characterization of Generals & Majors as “a goofy disco rewrite of Paperback Writer” is way off the mark in about 3 dimensions, and moderately accurate in only one.

Leisure is great you fools

None of the b-sides have ever sounded like they belong on there. Leave it alooone

“no thugs” is either the second or third best song on the album. i think “cockpit” is fine and “leisure” is good, but “melt the guns” is too much for even me, a guy who genuinely loves “living through another cuba”

Good article, though I often struggle to figure out where the line is between pop and underground. One of the article's assertions, and has been asserted by many others, is that XTC would be more broadly popular if they had just been heard. I don't know if that's true, it seems like plenty of people heard them and liked them well enough, and that their appeal grew after they became a studio-only band. This implies that a bigger marketing budget = increased popularity, and that's not true though it certainly helps! Is XTC's work too literate, too political or too musically challenging for mass appeal? Did Andy ever make any concessions to writing "pop"? One of XTC's charms is that their songs sound really straightforward but under the hood there are oddities that make them more than a 4/4 top 40 ballad or whatever. XTC have over 875,000 monthly listeners on Spotify which is a decent amount though pales compared to the punk elite.