Reviews of XTC: Song Stories
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Sunday, December 20, 1998 XTC blasts off again
By DAVID VEITCH
The Calgary SunBritish pop group returns with a box set and a new biography
The 1990s haven't been a particularly good decade for fans of XTC.
The British pop band's only studio album of the '90s, Nonsuch, was released six years ago. After that, Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding and the recently departed guitarist Dave Gregory fought to break their less-than-lucrative contract with Virgin. They finally succeeded, but only after years of self-imposed inactivity -- a painfully long stretch for fans of the band's Beatlesque tunesmithery.
Now set up with their own label, distributed in North America by New York-based TVT, there are finally stirrings in the XTC camp. The long-awaited new studio album, Apple Venus Vol. 1, should be out in late February or early March. In the meantime, XTC has released a four-CD box-set of their BBC recordings, titled Transistor Blast, and an insightful authorized biography written by journalist friend Neville Farmer, Song Stories.
The 317-page tome (Hyperion, $19.95) is a fascinating read for committed fans. Farmer chronicles the group's development from four hard-touring Swindon lads playing noisy New Wave to what they are today, a mature, studio-only entity making the finest pastoral-pop records this side of Rubber Soul and Smiley Smile.
In the process, Farmer gets the band members to spill the beans about studios, producers (Todd Rundgren's a tyrant; Steve Nye had bad gas, apparently) and each other. The interviews between Farmer and XTC are often transcribed verbatim and prove to be as revelatory for the band as for the reader. For fans, though, having Partridge and Moulding discuss the inspiration behind every one of their songs -- comics and drinking early on; family, fidelity and finances later on -- is the book's real selling point.
XTC's decision in 1982 to stop touring -- a result of Partridge's debilitating stage fright -- meant many fans never had the chance to see the band in concert. Transistor Blast offers proof XTC was a potent live act. Two CDs contain essentially two separate gigs in 1978 and 1980, both nervy and exciting though the latter show showed a marked improvement in songwriting and presentation. (By 1980, XTC wisely replaced Barry Andrews and his gothic keyboard style with Brit-pop classicist Gregory.) The other two CDs feature 25 studio performances for the BBC from 1977 to 1989. These tracks just skim XTC's canon yet contain an endless supply of inventive ideas, clever lyrics and unforgettable melodies.
One only wishes the tracks were arranged chronologically, so XTC's exquisite, latter-day songs didn't segue into their early, amphetamine-fuelled bursts of herky-jerky pop. A minor quibble, though, for a set that'll surely satiate loyalists and wow casual fans and the uninitiated.
XTC: Song Stories
[Thanks to Wes Hanks and with permission of David Veitch]
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
November 29, 1998, Sunday FINAL AM EDITION
by Dave Ferman, Star-Telegram Writer
Books about music can be a big hit on gift list
Christmas plus music equals, for a lot of people, the new Celine Dion or Babyface CDs.
Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't have to be that way. Some of the best Christmas gifts you can give your favorite music lover aren't music at all, but rather books about music.
That's particularly true in 1998, which saw the publication of a number of underpublicized books about, variously, swing music in Texas; zydeco and its place in Louisiana culture; an obscure jazz musician with an incredible secret; and a well-regarded but never riotously popular English band.
. . . And then there's XTC: Song Stories (Hyperion; $ 14.95), an account of the famous (and criminally underappreciated) English band told by the band itself and author Neville Farmer. XTC, you'll recall, has made sublime pop music since the '70s, but they rarely perform because of leader Andy Partridge's stage fright and his on-tour breakdown in California in 1982. After that, they devoted more time to crafting studio CDs.
Much of the book's narrative hinges on band members talking about individual songs. This doesn't sound like it would work, but it does.
Along the way, an interesting portrait of a unique band is drawn.
TOP Magazine
October 1998
XTC: SONG STORIES - THE EXCLUSIVE STORY BEHIND THE MUSIC
by XTC and Neville Farmer (Helter Skelter Publishing £12.99). Thorough examination of the personalities, and lyrical inspirations behind XTC's quintessentally arch and much-missed English pop, with the group members continuing to play their part to the full. (Ruth Morris)
Mojo
Issue 58, September 1998
The Good Life?
The discreet charm of Swindon's longest-running and barmiest combo. By Chris Ingham
XTC: Song Stories
Neville Farmer And XTC
Helter Skelter £12.00If you love XTC, hearing them grow from the brightest sparks of the New Wave School Of '78 into masters of Mature Pop has been one of the more heartening rock stories. In And Partridge they have a maverick songwriter of remarkable gifts, the trio of songs closing 1989's Oranges And Lemons alone being an extraordinary achievement; the effortless juggling of the baby/penis metaphor ion the sly and breezy Pink Thing, the life-giving/destructive evolution of himself as a Miniature Sun and the jawdropping beauty of Chalkhills And Children, all operating at rarely attained levels of musical sophistication and lyrical invention. Completing the band is Colin Moulding, a quietly excellent foil who long ago accepted his Harrison-esque proportion of credits (though, much to Partridge's dismay, Moulding managed to take the lion's share of single A-sides at one point), and Dave Gregory, the proper musician helping his Swindon chums achieve the sort of rigorously creative music very few grown-ups with guitars are capable of, some of the best music that pop has to offer.
However, the business side of XTC has been a disaster which has not yet ended. Always low on funds, the band were at a breakthrough point in their career when Partridge's terminal stage-fright ended their touring career in 1981; money went missing, management was sued, debts were accrued that even sales of half-a-million couldn't clear, a five-year deadlock ensued as Virgin refused to release them and XTC refused to work. When they did escape and record, studio bills were unpaid and tapes were confiscated. 20 years on, it appears the band who often worried in song about domestic finances (Love On A Farmboy's Wages, Earn Enough For Us) are struggling to finish their eleventh album, their first in six years, because, unbelievably they have no money.
This sorry tale runs behind the main thrust of Farmer's book which, in its cheerful celebration of the minutiae surrounding XTC's music and with the band's musical passion intact, doesn't wallow for a second. It's essentially a band-driven project for the fans, so if the song-by-song stuff is low of Revolution In The Head-style perception, it's high on setting-the-record-straight anecdote.
Farmer's chummy asides ("Trust Andy to find the oblique view...") and Partridge's neat summaries (on Moulding's beautiful Bungalow, "A bit of Mike Leigh-On-Sea"; on No Thugs In Our House, "Violent Motown meets Johnny Winter") set the tone. We learn much about recording circumstances (hours programming Linn drums, Dave Gregory objecting to Partridge's "atonal rub") and songs' inspirations, both musical (Terry Riley, dub, Blue Nile, "dicking around with the chords of Blackbird") and personal (Cold War paranoia, schoolyard crushes, wobbly marriages, Swindon).
The best sections are the disarmingly entertaining transcriptions of three-way reminiscences. On Andy's inability to appear live:
AP: "You must have been disappointed, though."
CM: "No, not really"
AP: "Well, that's very warming. Because I felt I was just public enemy number one..."
DG: "I felt sorry for you. It wasn't a conscious decisions made out of spite."
Hadn't they talked about this before?
The personality of Partridge dominates the book as it does XTC's music. Superbright. Funny, commanding, hurtful, there are many Andy Being Difficult stories. He's either crying (with stage fright, suing his manager/writing the fantastic Rook) or arguing, usually with producers. His run-ins with Todd Rundgren (or Herman Munster to the band) on what turned out to be their masterpiece, 1986's Skylarking, are hilariously terrifying.
It becomes clear that it's only thought the accommodating personalities of Moulding and Gregory (both of whom have been bruised by Andy but obviously love him, the latter at least considering him a genius) that XTC still exist. During Oranges And Lemons, Partridge made a cap decorated with pictures of female genitalia so when "anyone was being difficult they had to put on the Colonel Cunt Hat."
"I think it was made for you," remembers Colin.
"Strange. It fitted perfectly," says Andy.
Hurry back, chaps.
[Thanks to Simon Sleightholm]
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