Published on Jun 15, 2000
Many XTC fans throughout the years have moaned and groaned about
the band’s lack of commercial recognition. “If only Andy Partridge
hadn’t developed stagefright,” they say, “they would’ve kept
touring, and become as big as the Police. Instead, all XTC ever
gets to be is a cult band, while their imitators like the Crash
Test Dummies go multiplatinum.”
But what those fans are forgetting is that most bands that
become as big as the Police or the Crash Test Dummies either burn
out in the fire of their success (like the Police) or fade away
when the public moves on to the next flavor of the month (like the
Crash Test Dummies). Meanwhile, XTC goes chugging along with more
critically-acclaimed-but-commercially-ignored discs on independent
labels.
I like it this way. Partridge and Colin Moulding (i.e., XTC)
apparently don’t at the moment, as they are trying their darnedest
to break into the airwaves with a bunch of songs that (for the most
part) sacrifice the expansiveness of more recent XTC in favor of
some relatively straightforward lyrics, and the tight, spare,
jangly-guitar based sound of much of their earlier work.
Moulding’s “Standing In For Joe” is about as plain vanilla as
XTC has ever been – a story of a man assigned to “take care” of his
best friend’s girlfriend while he’s out of town, and what happens
as a result (gee willakers, I didn’t see that coming!) The fact
that the melody bears an uncanny resemblance to Steely Dan’s
“Barrytown” doesn’t help. “We’re All Light,” one of those
we’re-all-going-to-die-someday-so-give-me-a-kiss songs, doesn’t do
much for me either. Though it’s cool to see XTC sound a bit more
hip once in a while, they’re way to intelligent to pull off the
philosopher-as-seducer thing.
The singles “Wounded Horse” and “I’m The Man Who Murdered Love”
sound more like XTC at least; the former a pokey (or perhaps a
slowly galloping) messed-up ballad like “The Ugly Underneath,”
fitting every possible equestrian metaphor into the plight of a
breakup victim, and the latter a power-rocker reminiscent of “Earn
Enough For Us” whose title pretty much speaks for itself. But both
are also relatively irony-free, sort of like XTC on a kids’
menu.
The grownup songs, though, are as biting and unpredictable as
they’ve ever been.
Wasp Star (Apple Venus Vol. 2) kicks off, in fact, with
three immediate entries into the vintage XTC category, as far I’m
concerned, and three entries which pretty much summarize the
songwriting styles of Moulding and Partridge throughout the years.
The gritty “Playground” would fit in well on
Black Sea and contains the priceless line “You may leave
school / but it never leaves you.” Then the cute “Stupidly Happy,”
which does more with only one measure’s worth of chords than just
about any piece of music ever has, thanks to XTC’s innate ability
to pile layer upon layer of production without making a song sound
overproduced in the slightest. And who but Andy Partridge would be
able to think of a line like “If the Devil drove up with his
business card I’d tear it into confetti?”
“In Another Life” completes this triad with the utmost elegance,
combining elements of classic British / Irish folk with some
almost-jazz-like musical themes, much like they did on
Mummer. It also incorporates some of the cockney stylings of
“Frivolous Tonight” from last year’s
Apple Venus CD, but with much more interesting lyrics –
“I’ll take your mood swings / you’ll take my hobbies / it all works
out in the end.”
Coming a bit later is Moulding’s “Boarded Up,” an acoustic
portrayal of a dying industrial town (could it be his own
Swindon?), and one of the real highlights of the album. The fact
that a band originally known for its high-energy craziness can
handle a folk song with equal eloquence speaks volumes. The
calypso-like romp “You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful” is
wonderful too – it sort of feels like the emotional pickup that
Partridge needed in the more depressing sections of
Oranges And Lemons and
Nonsuch. Though coming after “Wounded Horse,” it serves that
purpose here as well.
So yes,
Wasp Star does get a little watered down at times. But
fortunately, this is not the norm for the album as a whole. Every
XTC album (with the possible exception of
Skylarking) has one or two clunkers anyway, and that’s the
price we pay for following a band that isn’t afraid to go out on a
limb. This is both a solid introduction to one of the most
underappreciated songwriting tandems of the rock era for the
uninitiated, and an album that is worthy of the XTC name for
longtime fans.