Time to take an XTC trip, indeed.
This band's b-sides and castoffs are all worth exploring and are often just more damn FUN than their LPs.
Don't you dare call me chickenhead!
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 16:55 (fourteen years ago) link
Have long been mystified by XTC's relative lack of love. It seems they're one of those bands that if you don't love, you really don't even like, or don't get. I think part of this is down to Partridge's voice, which is an acquired taste-- and certainly his songwriting. He's super smart, and is a pretty amazing craftsman...but what he chooses to create is often so idiosyncratic, so of its own world, that unless you want to live in that world too, it might seem a bit uninviting, or even actively offputting.
― Dominique, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:21 (fourteen years ago) link
Idiosyncratic makes him seem more interesting than he actually is, not that I don't like XTC, but they are irritating
― The Prince's choice: making a brush. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:31 (fourteen years ago) link
... or rather, he is irritating
― The Prince's choice: making a brush. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:33 (fourteen years ago) link
do you see?!?
― Dominique, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:41 (fourteen years ago) link
See what?
― The Prince's choice: making a brush. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:43 (fourteen years ago) link
It seems they're one of those bands that if you don't love, you really don't even like, or don't get.
― cutty, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:48 (fourteen years ago) link
I like XTC, I don't love them
― The Prince's choice: making a brush. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:48 (fourteen years ago) link
you THINK you like them. you don't.
― cutty, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:52 (fourteen years ago) link
especially if you are using the word irritating to describe partridge
OK, are you being serious here, or you having a laugh? Hard to tell over the internet.
― The Prince's choice: making a brush. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:54 (fourteen years ago) link
Comparing my likes of 20 yrs ago with my likes now, XTC have taken what might be the biggest plunge, and I wish it weren't so.
I still think that (excepting Robyn Hitchcock) they're the finest melodists and hook-merchants of the post-beatles school, and Black Sea is a kind of apotheosis of hooky-but-skronky pop guitar... but every year I age seems to make the schoolmasterish finish of Andy's lyrics more and more irritating. He comes off as a scold and a tightass and a know-it-all.
I guess as I get older and continue to see more and more subjectivity and circumstance and simple ignorance behind my own convictions/opinions, Andy's waterproof parquet theses get more alien to me.
Sorry if the above fails to make sense...
― im Haus der Lols (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 18:03 (fourteen years ago) link
... makes sense to me!
― The Prince's choice: making a brush. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 18:04 (fourteen years ago) link
An "acquired taste", really? I mean, Mark E Smith is most surely an acquired taste, but Andy's voice sounded golden to me the moment I heard him. Horses for courses and all that but sometimes I simply can't escape my own love for an artist to hear what others might dislike.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 18:05 (fourteen years ago) link
I have absolutely no problem with Andy or Colin's voices.
― im Haus der Lols (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 18:07 (fourteen years ago) link
Jon - any specific lyrics you'd like to call out? I think many artists who write direct lyrics like Andy probably suffer from "gosh I wish I'd been more subtle or nuanced when I was younger".
I share your adoration of Mr. Hitchcock and he probabably escapes this by writing completely indirect lyrics, and the occasions when he is direct also might not sound so good 20 years later.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 18:10 (fourteen years ago) link
Man, now I have to do another traversal of the XTC catalog in order to back up my mouthing-off!
It's not really a prob for me when Andy's younger. I feel like it starts to worsen when they become studio-only and then more and more as he ages.
Robyn H, of course, has plenty of annoying lyrics himself, but with him it's a "really? You couldn't revise that couplet?" kind of thing. Or "really? You used someone's first name to pull off a rhyme AGAIN?"
― im Haus der Lols (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 18:20 (fourteen years ago) link
Wow MaresNest that is a sweet link, thank you! When I was 19 I read probably every interview ever with XTC &/or its members, so it's fun to do that again but w/new stuff.
― existential eggs (Abbott), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 19:36 (fourteen years ago) link
Jon, I hear you on Andy's lyrical tendencies-- tho I tend to associate them w/general insularity, and not necessarily that he thinks he knows it all. I actually suspect he's super humble, but awkward, and probably brainier than most of his friends. It's almost like he makes songs as toys (or "wishes", per that Emitt Rhodes interview from the other thread) for himself. OR PERHAPS I AM READING TOO MUCH INTO HIM :/
― Dominique, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 20:19 (fourteen years ago) link
even if xtc never recorded another tune after "making plans for nigel", i'd still say wholly classic. got a Japanese reissue of English Settlement a few years ago - sound quality is v. nice on it...
― outdoor_miner, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 21:21 (fourteen years ago) link
I *get* that Andy's voice could be irritating, and especially that his lyrics might piss one off with their gee-whizness, but where it might bother me in other bands, it doesn't with XTC. (Some of his lyrics are nigh-unlistenable for me, esp. "Ladybird", "Toys" and "Books are Burning" but I can never hold their lapses against them somehow, and it doesn't feel like being indulgent, it feels like appreciating a band gestalt - like how "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Piggies" are part and parcel of the Beatles and you don't stop loving them because they have a few pisspoor moments.) (And you know what? I hear Andy's "waterproof parquet theses" exactly as an expression of a subjective viewpoint, not as a Bono-esque "we can all save the world if YOU change your misguided ways!" finger-wag [with a couple exceptions] which is probably why I can tolerate them - he sounds to me like a guy wrestling with his conscience instead of a flag-waver)
― staggerlee, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 22:28 (fourteen years ago) link
This thread will probably cause me to traverse the XTC discog yet again. I love picking away at things that give me problems.
― im Haus der Lols (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 22:35 (fourteen years ago) link
Thread made me bust out "English Settlement." It's one of those albums that took me years to fully get into. I had the same thing with "Songs in the Key of Life" – they're both so BIG and so GOOD. Like by the time "Jason and the Argonauts" is over I'm just drained.
Looking, at the tracks after that, actually, I can't remember any of them except "Fly on the Wall." I usually have a break after "Jason" because it's so damn epic, and I guess I never pick it back up. How weird.
― existential eggs (Abbott), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:17 (fourteen years ago) link
Snowman has always been a fav of mine, still blast it when it comes up on my iPod
― velko, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:19 (fourteen years ago) link
"Melt the Guns" is really embarrassing.
― existential eggs (Abbott), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:23 (fourteen years ago) link
wtf it's 6:34!!!!
english settlement is pretty amazing all the way through
― cutty, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:27 (fourteen years ago) link
i said it on a different XTC thread once, but the beginning of "melt the guns" sounds like animal collective
― cutty, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:28 (fourteen years ago) link
Andy in social commentary mode can get pretty insufferable. I can't stand stuff like Melt the Guns and Books Are Burning, etc.
― Jesus, the Czar of Czars (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:28 (fourteen years ago) link
why do you love guns, shakey
― cutty, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:31 (fourteen years ago) link
someone please share their thoughts on "complicated game" from drums and wires
― cutty, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:34 (fourteen years ago) link
and the genius of "meccanic dancing"
― cutty, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:35 (fourteen years ago) link
"complicated game" is the best song on d&w and it took me forever to notice it- tucked way back on what would be side two of the alblum. haven't heard it in a few months, that's all i got....
― outdoor_miner, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:42 (fourteen years ago) link
hi five!
― cutty, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:44 (fourteen years ago) link
best song on d&w besides nigel of course
"Snowman" is so, so good. One of my favorite AP lines: "People will always be tempted to wipe their feet on anything with 'welcome' written on it."
As a little kid, I loved Andy's voice because I thought all his vocal tics (the hiccups, snarls, etc.) were funny, so I guess I can see it being a turnoff for some.
― lindseykai, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:55 (fourteen years ago) link
the beginning of "melt the guns" sounds like animal collective Yeah, but what sounds like the end? I want a whole album of that. Rhythmic gurgling and spastic gibbering. Yet so catchy & memorable & not annoying at all. (Mrs. Staggerlee can take about 30 seconds of it before she says "Yeah, we get the point" and skips to the next track. And what's up with the bass playing on this song? It's insane. Like, Andy comes in with the chords and Colin's response is "I'm gonna play like Mike Watt." Altho there's no way he's heard The Minutemen at this point.
― staggerlee, Wednesday, 21 October 2009 01:23 (fourteen years ago) link
Funny, I adore "Melt The Guns" (just for the sound of it!) and "Books Are Burning" not to mention "Peter Pumpkinhead", "Dear God", etc. Maybe it helps that I agree with his point of view. Political songs don't have to dance around the issue.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Wednesday, 21 October 2009 03:22 (fourteen years ago) link
I think I could totally dig "Melt the Guns" if it was in Portugese, and I'm as anti-gun as they come. Just the lyrics are so embarrassing. I relistened to it today and the bridge is pretty sweet. The chorus just makes me cover my face with my hands, tho.
― existential eggs (Abbott), Wednesday, 21 October 2009 04:15 (fourteen years ago) link
the lyrics don't bug me because they are sorta nonsense-y and i don't pay much attention to them. dear god, on the other hand, i cannot listen to because it is anti-religion challops x infinity (plus it's boring musically)
― velko, Wednesday, 21 October 2009 04:22 (fourteen years ago) link
xtc melt the guns >> the legend! melt the guns
― would s*m*a*s*h (electricsound), Wednesday, 21 October 2009 04:22 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm not much of an XTC stan, I tried to get into Drums and Wires, Black Sea, and The Big Express as a youth but most of the songs left me meh. Complicated Game is incredible though. A bravura vocal performance of furious, frustrated, almost comically ridiculous anguish.
― surfing on hokusine waves (ledge), Wednesday, 21 October 2009 08:39 (fourteen years ago) link
Oh God, 'Complicated Game' what a great song.
― MaresNest, Wednesday, 21 October 2009 09:08 (fourteen years ago) link
I actually suspect he's super humble, but awkward, and probably brainier than most of his friends
Andy Partridge? Humble? Really? I agree that he's brainy and awkward though!
― The Prince's choice: making a brush. (Tom D.), Wednesday, 21 October 2009 16:05 (fourteen years ago) link
last 3 songs on drums&wires just destroy
― extremely demanding on the hardware (ciderpress), Wednesday, 21 October 2009 16:07 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah I think he's probably a humble guy! I think he's got a lot of opinions, and is compulsively "witty" about expressing them. However, he hardly strikes me as a guy who'd monopolize the dinner table w/tales of his own glory. More like, he'd monopolize the dinner table w/vaguely creepy tales of masturbating as a teen, and then having a dream wherein he was punished by giant toy robots for it. And then he'd immediately write a song about it, and send it to you the next week. And that's kinda endearing to me! I don't know, just general hyperactive dorkiness doesn't irritate me, so much as make me squirm sometimes.
― Dominique, Wednesday, 21 October 2009 20:13 (fourteen years ago) link
Some more linkage, 4 podcasts featuring AP and John Leckie reminiscing about the making of the two Dukes records.
About 80 mins all in, scroll down.
http://apehouse.prevuz.com/
― MaresNest, Wednesday, 21 October 2009 20:18 (fourteen years ago) link
here comes presdient kiiilll agaaaiiinnn
― lukevalentine, Saturday, 24 October 2009 21:41 (fourteen years ago) link
"Wow!" @ English Settlement! Is it all this good?
― piscesx, Sunday, 1 November 2009 21:22 (fourteen years ago) link
drums and wires or skylarking next
― cutty, Sunday, 1 November 2009 22:06 (fourteen years ago) link