XTC : Classic or Dud.

althooooooooooough! i feel like none of the album-listening options really get into what i want to get out of xtc, except maybe skylarking, which i kind of killed by listening to it ~8,000 times in my late teens

i mean what i like about them is about them as songwriters and as studio experimenters in search of sounds which make those songs work -- whenever i listen to a whole album their sounds sort of register more as sets of textures created for the sake of an album's particular, er, aesthetic

not that that's a bad thing, obviously

have you noticed that playlist doubling in size over the past day or so? I've been busy :D

would argue English Settlement delivers whole-album joy and Nonsuch, for me at least, never drops below 'good'.

your point is interesting though - I don't THINK that on their very best work they homogenise their sound around 'variations on a theme', but it's a criticism that can be fairly aimed at, say, Oranges And Lemons or White Music

Skylarking is one of their more homogenous albums*, but it gets away with it on the strength of the songwriting

*great curveball that is Another Satellite notwithstanding

Should listen to some XTC again. (All my albums are in my mum's house)

I don't think I've heard "English Settlement" in about 20 years!

I've just remembered, I used to be able to play all the basslines on "English Settlement" (probably skipped the more difficult ones tho), same with "Black Sea", remember being able to do a mean "Rocket From a Bottle"

I like that XTC album "White Music" also.

Disturbing lack of of the astonishing Big Express on your POX Louis.

Not mentioned yet: I'd Like That, one of the romantic songs I've ever heard.

Wake Up wasn't far off inclusion, and it's in my Spotify playlist

I need to give TBE more of a listen though

The problem is that I grew up with all the albums EXCEPT for the first two, Mummer and TBE, so have really had to work to jam those ones into my consciousness

I grew up with The Beatles, so discovering XTC when I was about 18 was like revisiting blissful musical-first love.

They're easy to compare to Cardiacs I guess, but I get a completely different vibe from each band. Like Cardiacs kind of frighten me.

OTM on Complicated Game (the 'darkest" XTC song?) and English Roundabout which is totally Fragile-era Yes.

english roundabout is one of those rare songs in a non-standard time signature (5/4) that sounds completely natural and not forced

Travels In Nihilon is darker than Complicated Game but the latter is more savage

XTC are excellent Muppet music, which is why I can't listen to them for more than 25 minutes: all that hiccuping and bleating.

Black Sea is my favorite, actually.

XTC and Cardiacs aren't very similar at all - there's different things at stake, different vibes for both bands, different levels of intensity - different TYPES of intensity. The key's in the lyrics - both ingenious but in different ways that get to the core of the respective pop titans' psyches (XTC = very literate, verse-chorus, ornate, snarky - Cardiacs = scattergun, often barely-comprehensible, edge-of-mind, sublime frenzy)

Seen that promo photo of the new Swans lineup LJ? Gira a deadringer for Tim on the cover of STG.

link?

http://new.assets.thequietus.com/images/articles/4724/swans_headshots_large_1280489291_crop_550x532.jpeg

Any love here for the song Red Brick Dream? A BE era b-side, the odd way they sequenced the pre-remaster CDs (smack in the middle of the record, after 'side 1') has rendered lots of odd stuff forever as part of the official tracklisting in my brain. Sometimes a bad thing (Desert Island/Procession Towards Learning Land) and sometimes a good thing (Red Brick Dream, Blue Overall, Jump, Limelight)

Oops, neglected to mention that I was talking about B-Sides being sequenced. Brain fried from Gym.

I only found out the other day that Limelight, Chain Of Command and Life Begins At The Hop aren't meant to be on D&W :/

that's FIFTEEN YEARS OF MISUNDERSTANDING

All three of the tracks they bunged in the middle of Black Sea are great, IMO, especially Smokeless Zone which is one of Colin's best

Really? Smokeless Zone always seemed a little slight to me.

nah I love how it sounds, and how it careens to a wheezy halt

Tissue Tigers tho' right?

you've lost me

English Settlement b-side, you've never heard it?

It's a crappy rip, from a flexidisc but I can't find better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ut5xh6ZGfA

Life Begins at the Hop is on my OG 80's LP, which contained a 7" of Chain of Command and Limelight, but looking online there were a few different configurations of Drums & Wires around the world.

Smokeless Zone, Tissue Tigers and the rest of the B-sides that comprise the Beeswax LP make that a very interesting compilation imo.

XTC are one of those "wish I liked them more" bands. Love the singles/well known tracks, love some of the out there stuff (Complicated Game ftw) but everything in between leaves me almost completely cold.

Maybe repeated exposure would help but I doubt it. Listened to a few albums quite heavily some years ago, and I can still recall all the tracks from e.g. Drums and Wires, but everything between Nigel and Scissor Man totally blurs together into one big pile of meh.

there are a few highlights but it's an overrated album as I've said - Complicated Game is the behemoth standing over the rest and the album's truest legacy

tissue tigers is neat! although not as weird and wacky and generally unique as smokeless zone, which is a singularity IMO

I recently listened to all my XTC b-sides and there almost all top quality tunes chock-a-block full of odd time changes, interesting sounds and great lyrics.

yeah this will grow on me I think

RFI: Who is the female singer at the beginning of Dear God?

i thought it was a boy...

it's the daughter of a local friend of Rundgren's.

They put a little boy lip syncing that part in the video.

yeah thats probably why then!

C/D? XTC are damn classic!! Better songwriters than the Beatles! Also agreed re: the quality of some of their B-sides. I realize that Mummer was not really a great album, so it's frustrating to see that there was practically an entire album of great B-sides/unreleased singles that didn't make it. "Tissue Tigers" is one of their all time greats. Ditto for "Punch and Judy" and "The World is Full of Angry Young Men"

I have the CDs with all the B-sides as extras and they're great! But it's weird how they decided to put all the B-sides in the middle of the album.

In some cases yes. White Music and Mummer are the two that do that if I recall correctly. White Music doesn't really depend on sequencing so I don't mind...whereas on Mummer the bonus tracks are better than most of the album material :)

My copies of Drums & Wires, Black Sea, and Big Express have them in the middle as well. The other XTC albums I own are from a different run (the ones that looked like fake LPS in the flat cardboard cases that don't fit on some shelves).

I've listened to them all like that for so long that it's weird when I play the records without the B-sides. The only B-side that really sticks out, thematically, from the album it got shoved in the middle of is "Somnabulist" on Black Sea.

According to Andy's Ape Records website, on Nov. 22 they are rereleasing Skylarking on vinyl as two 45 rpm discs, containing both "Dear God" and "Mermaid Smiled" for the first (?) time, in regular (expensive) and deluxe (really expensive) editions.

Also, "During the course of this beautiful remastering job by legendary mastering engineer John Dent it was discovered that an error in the original mix chain had imparted all previous CD's and vinyls of the album with the unfortunate flaw of being out of polarity. In a nutshell this means that sounds that should have been pushing from your speakers where actually pulling them in to play out of the back more than the front!?! John has thankfully corrected this undetected error and we can tell you that this stunning cut of the album is about 30% better sounding than any previously heard."

Also also, they will be using the unseen-until-now original artwork for the album which was summarily rejected by anyone not named Andy Partridge:

http://www.ape.uk.net/images/Skylarkingfinal200.jpg

Preordering now. I'll wait for the CD myself.

I read about that "error", which seems bizarre to me. a) that is an amazing sounding record as it is, and b) really, you didn't notice this apparently glaring error???

Whoa, I read about that album artwork before, but finally seeing it is crazy!