XTC : Classic or Dud.

"You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful", for the reason that it is SO, SO, SO CLOSE to being absolutely superb, but somehow falls short, with the consequence that I am terrifically disappointed every time I hear it.

Oh, and Drew, if it helps, the album that got me into XTC was Nonsuch, which actually gets some flak on these boards.

from all indications, every XTC fan has a completely different set of criteria and favorites when it comes to this band (I think Nonsuch is mostly crap btw)

Nonsuch is superb. (xpost)

"You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful", for the reason that it is SO, SO, SO CLOSE to being absolutely superb, but somehow falls short, with the consequence that I am terrifically disappointed every time I hear it.

The 'Homegrown' demo of this song retains that beauty.

Nonsuch is a frankly brilliant album full of brilliant songs that came out at exactly the wrong time. Quite sad, really.

I really really tried to like Wasp Star, really I did. Still a fair few gems on it, but maaaaaan. Way too much dross. Considering the incredible quality of the post-1992 Fuzzy Warbles cut-outs, this doesn't make any sense at all.

The Wheel and the Maypole is the best ever official XTC song, however.

"Nonsuch" is surely superb.

I even like "The Wasp Star". I cannot get myself to like "White Music" or "Go 2" though.

Mekkanikk dancing!! OH WE GO!!!

Something I was thinking about during the Sasha thread: the period of XTC's career that's probably most associated with whitebread Beatles / Beach Boys 60s-ism is actually the period where they were ... funkiest, at least in the sense that upscale 80s soul-boys were funky. "That's Really Super, Supergirl" has some funk. Bits of Oranges and Lemons and Skylarking both seem to be taking off after Scritti Politti, or something ("Another Satellite"), and some of the pop tracks (like "King for a Day") are total 80s cheery-Englishman r&b. The idea that they're 60-obsessed or regressive isn't completely off the wall, or anything -- I can understand where the impression comes from -- but digging in and considering the context keeps providing challenges to that idea. They had at least as wide a streak of studio blue-eyed soul going on, I think, just without the synths that usually announced it.

"Wasp Star" is pretty poopy, but that's the only XTC record I can say that about. "Apple Venus" took me about five years to get into, but it is beauty itself.

xpost - In fact, much as this might cause genre-category errors for some people, I can imagine any number of upscale-studio 80s black pop/soul singers doing most of the songs on those two albums, in the same way it's possible to imagine any number of such singers doing Scritti songs from around the same period.

nabisco I agree with yr point but yr examples are kinda befuddling (I wouldn't consider Supergirl or King for a Day remotely soul/funk, altho they do *bounce* a bit) - but Andy's always gone out of his way to incorporate non-white Euro stuff, he's had many flirtations with various "world music" tropes, both early and later in their career ("Poor Skeleton Steps Out", "Its Nearly Africa", etc.) Bonafide funk though? I don't hear it.

also 80s soul/r&b is really fucking dire in general ugh

It's somehow counter to our genre intuition, I know, but go back and listen to those tracks! And hold them up against the context of the shiny/sparkly upscale soul and r&b that were ... not uncommon during the decade. "Supergirl" doesn't have a deep groove, or anything, but with squishier synths and a black singer it might come off like some kind of cartoon Cameo. (Think of the rhythm interplay during the verses!) And "King for a Day" is exactly the kind of vaguely soulful chart-pop that was equally black and white, soul and rock, at the time (though to be honest, stuff like this tended to be a white English soul-singer kind of thing) -- think of the "the way that (we're living)" vocal organization on that one.

white music and go 2 are sweet geir! u crazy.

nonesuch suxxx wang.

i like 'em up through around drums and wires or black sea i can't remember which came first.

i have english settlement but i don't remember it too well.

English Settlement is gentle and very long, and thoroughly enjoyable.

nabisco - I don't hear it in the rhythm section, which is (ostensibly) where it would count most. Sure in the 80s they had a LinnDrum and a fretless bass but Prince they were not.

If you are searching for a groove or funk, then why search in XTC's catalog in the first place? Sure, there may be some of it there, but the main point about XTC's music lies in considerably different musical values.

I .... sorta agree with Geir.

Influences can happen by accident, though, e.g. Partridge never intended Green Man to sound even vaguely middle eastern. For him it was all pagan pastoral Britishness to the core.

Umm I think my relationship with music hopefully involves less "searching" artists' catalogs for things I'm looking for, and more trying to take note of what's actually there

Did anyone buy the remasters when they came out in, what, 2001? Was it that much of an improvement over the original CDs?

In the case of the Steve Lillywhite productions, they sound considerably better.

Plus having all those bonus tracks at the end of the album is a lot better than having them in the middle.

They were in the middle? Sheesh!

Yeah, Virgin put them in the middle of everything from White Music to Big Express.

the CD versions I have of the Dukes, Mummer, and English Settlement are like half as loud as most of the other CDs in my collection. its really odd.

My English Settlement (Virgin, 72 min) is definitely louder, but heavy on the midrange. I had to manually bring it down a couple of decibels for my ipod.

Sorry to just jump in, but this is an unmissable opportunity for me to moan about the fact that the booklets in the remasters print the lyrics in such tiny type as to be, for all intents and purposes, illegible. why? did no-one bother to try reading what they'd just designed? i find this annoying because i know the lyrics are likely to be good, but some are very hard to decipher.

you could try listening to what he is singing

the booklets in the remasters print the lyrics in such tiny type as to be, for all intents and purposes, illegible. why?

Are they reprints of the LP packaging?

the nonsuch remaster, admittedly, has tiny reprints of the original lyric-sheets, but hey, the words are there IN YOUR EARS

Which is the Raft reissue with the back cover printed all wonky? Is it Nonsuch?

It is not like Andy Partridge of Colin Moulding have cookie-monster vocals.

*digs out copy* YES IT IS. Absolute idiocy.

It is not like Andy Partridge of Colin Moulding have cookie-monster vocals.

he really shake you donkey up
he really make you donkey up
he really shake you donkey up quite a packet

me lost me cookie at the disco
me lost me cookie in the booooo-gie muuuu-sic
me lost me cookie at the disco
me want it back he want it back me want it back again

MARK THE DIFFERENCE FOR ME MARK IT PLEASE

Come to think of it, the last verse of 'Complicated Game' is fairly larynx-shredding.

Have been on my regular semi-decade XTC non-stop rampage of late. Am somewhat befuddled by the general lack of love for them on these boards (and, well, pretty much everywhere, but it is extra-surprising here, since they bridge rock & pop perfectly; also the visceral and the cerebral) - Am I the only person here who considers them hands down the best British band since the Beatles? Because I do. Maybe that's the rarest opinion I actually possess...

>Black Sea is distilled fun.
Oh yeah, Almanac: "Travels in Nihilon" is a cotton-candy paradise! :)

White Music and Go 2 are good but not stellar - great singles, as others have noted - I generally get all I need of this period from the Transistor Blast and Coat of Many Cupboards sets. Drums & Wires & Black Sea are front-to-back brilliant. I mean, really, just everybody should own them. English Settlement loses me a little bit; it could be that a better mastering job would reclaim it for me, but the sonic oomph just isn't there (compare the version of "No Thugs" on ES to the one on Transistor Blast). Still, more brilliance packed into that album than most anything you'd want to name. Mummer and Big Express lose me - Andy gets precious and lots of lyrical lapses, middling-poor production on both records, a sense of trying to find their way after deciding not to tour anymore. The Dukes, Skylarking, Oranges & Lemons, and even the maligned Nonsuch are virtually unimpeachable for me - the soggy bits are more than mopped up by the towering greatness of the better material. And, of course, there's a nostalgia factor (the music you heard when you were 15 years old, yadda yadda), but I'd consider about 90% of those albums essential.

Nonsuch is a frankly brilliant album full of brilliant songs that came out at exactly the wrong time. Quite sad, really.― Just got offed OTM.

The final pair of albums promised so much for their next phase. I even love Wasp Star (it's better on vinyl, if you can get hold of it - the mastering is so much less brassy and compressy). They extended both sides of the XTC that I loved: perfect pop songs ("The Man Who Murdered Love" is an example of Andy allowing himself to get simple, with I think great results, despite its sounding as though someone besides Andy could have written it [his earlier songs are utterly idiosyncratic - which, by the way, I think is a better descriptor for the band than "quirky" is]) alongside more complex material (the rondelle of "River of Orchids", the multipart cobbled-together structure of "Maypole", the "Snowman"-esque polyrhythm of "You & the Clouds"). These albums contain Moulding's finest bass playing, if not his finest songs. Had the critical and (especially) commercial reception not been so miserable XTC might have squeezed out another couple of records, and who knows, they might even have been very good ones. But all good bands must come to an end. I continue to listen, and to bore folks silly banging on about them to anyone who'll indulge me.

So, um, dud, obv.

I actually was ripping all my XTC discs the other week, but I wasn't compelled to listen to any of them. Then again there's a lot of stuff that I got into around that time (specifically late eighties/early nineties) which falls into that category.

Watch yo ass homies coz gangsta andy partridge is gonna pop a cap in it.

haha love gangsta andy partridge

i just listened to black sea yesterday

I thought there was hella XTC love on ILM, not quite sure where you're getting this vibe from, staggerlee...lord knows I'll sing their praises to anyone who'll listen.

Think it totally says something about Andy that the cruelest, most harrowing post-divorce sentiment he could etch into song was an extended metaphor about spelling.

xpost

I guess I was expecting MASSIVE WAVES of love, not a high percentage of "ehr, I liked their early stuff OK but I totally lost track after Skylarking" and the like. Though I should have known better since ILM generally seems to have trouble with sincerity in lyrics (yes, I cringe when I hear "The Loving." I also wish I were brave enough to write something as plainspoken as that, or as "Melt the Guns." And let's not get into the thorny issue of "Dear God".) When I made that post I also only had seen the first page of the search results, so I mistakenly thought that there were only 5 XTC threads on ILM. Whoop. I've spent the intervening 2 hours reading the rest of them...

Heartened to see that there are a number of obsessives here (hi, all! Were any of you denizens of the now defunct xtcidearecords forum? I lost years of my life there.)

I love Bimble's talk of XTC "trips". This is absolutely the case; there are times when no other music seems right for me. For weeks and months at a time.

Am I alone in unreservedly loving Oranges and Lemons (although I recognize there are lesser songs on it) and Wasp Star? Alzo: has their star fallen dramatically in the past few years and is it time for a mini-revival? There was talk of another round of remasters to have been released starting this April, but that seems to have fallen (as so many putative XTC projects) by the wayside. (I want them to do a mono box set, just to see Geir's reaction.)

l0u1s jagg3r loved some of the later albums

wasp star is horrible imo, the shitty production is part of it but the songs aren't so hot either. apple venus was mostly great, so it was a bad way to end.

I like Mummer, Colin's throwaway songs aside. I really really like Apple Venus, Colin's throwaway songs aside.

Oranges and Lemons was always one of my faves too, so no, you're not alone.

Phil, have you lost GAP's password?

Er, I didn't mean Mummer, I meant Nonsuch. So I am going mad.