When XTC released in Nonsuch (Geffen) in 1992, it was already a veteran band raging against a younger alternative tidal wave. Still, its stinging, satirical songs like "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" helped secure the band's position as masters of intricate pop (the album peaked at #3 on CMJ's Radio top 200). Due in large part to a bitter legal battle with its former U.K. label, Virgin Records, XTC has been silent for much of the 90s. But a new deal with TVT Records in America aims to keep its legend alive.

Prior to the February 23rd release of Apple Venus Volume 1, XTC's first studio album in seven years, TVT released Transistor Blast, a four-CD box set of live BBC recordings. Compared with the wiry, electric edge of the early recordings from Transistor Blast, Apple Venus shows just how far XTC (now just the duo of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding) has come since forming in 1976 in Swindon, England. Partridge describes Apple Venus as an "orchustic" record, as it is built almost exclusively on acoustic instruments with symphonic backing. "I don't think there's any self-hypnosis involved here," Partridge says, "but I think it's the best stuff we've done".

"The refined, acoustic nature of Apple Venus usually frightens record label people," jokes Paul Burgess, TVT's VP of Marketing and Sales. "But with a songwriter as great as Andy, and knowing how XTC has changed with the years, [I knew] if anyone could do it, Andy and Colin could."

As a long-time fan, Burgess is excited and flattered to work with the band, but he is not blind to the obstacles ahead. "The fact that they've been around a while and that the marketplace has changed a lot since they last recorded [present some challenges]," Burgess admits. But Burgess is also encouraged by the overall quality of the album. In fact, TVT is working on deals with stereo manufacturers to feature the Apple Venus CD as a demonstration disc for their high-end audio systems.

"I think this record has an appeal to a much wider audience than many people would perceive," Burgess says. "There's a really charming innocence about it. You listen to these love songs and you're amazed by the simplicity of them, which to me has a kinship to a lot of indie rock that's out there."

TVT is hoping that XTC's legend (and ironically, its long hiatus) will spark a fresh interest in the band. "I think we'll pick up a lot of new fans with this record, says Burgess. "There's a hip factor in that they haven't been around."

Led by the bouncy first single "I'd Like That," the initial promotion and marketing plans for Apple Venus are aimed at Triple A radio and heritage Alternative radio (with an add date of February 16). The duo will also embark on a nationwide promotional tour, visiting retail and radio in an effort to expand its audience. Fans hoping to see the band play live shouldn't hold their collective breath--XTC hasn't toured since 1982. However, the Bravo cable network is planning to air a special about Partridge and Moulding's work on Apple Venus Volume 2, a new electric record due in late 1999.

XTC
The Big Express

Here we go again. . . Sigh. Andy Partridge has once again come forth with another mostly brilliant XTC album, as usual fully deserving of critical acceptance (certified herewith) and massive airplay (wishful thinking). This time around we're particularly intrigued by "This World Over" (a Police-ish ballad that could be a hit), "Wake Up" (wild production and sharp lyrics), "I Remember The Sun" (another almost-hit), "All You Pretty Girls" (best for AOR), and "Liarbird" (upbeat and cynical). The remainder, for those inclined, are more exploratory and wild. Let's hope for the best-maybe this time around justice will be served.

Welshman Martin Newell, an off-again, on-again songwriter and accomplished poet, sent off a couple of demo tracks to XTC's Andy Partridge. Partridge (who's recently broken his stage silence via a one-song cameo with Aimee Mann in New York) was so taken with the tape, he offered to produce and perform a handful of the backing tracks. It doesn't take a huge XTC fan to realize that Newell is a huge XTC fan. The song structures on The Greatest Living Englishman could well be XTC B-sides (or Jellyfish A-sides for that matter), replicating familiar (and very British) melodies and chord structures. However, Partridge's production (at times stark and refreshingly homespun) along with Newell's generally strong text keeps these songs from drifting into Rutle-land, ever to be forgotten as McCartney mimicry gone wrong. Great pop songs and great peeks into everyday English living: "Before The Hurricane," "A Street Called Prospect," "Goodbye Dreaming Fields," "Straight To You Boy" and the title track.
- Steve Ciabattoni

The Dukes will get by with a little help from their fans, and Psonic Psunspot's quasi-blatancy in dealing with their other hobby (XTC) could give these blokes a career of their own. Unlike 25 O'Clock, the Dukes' debut EP with its strawberry-wristband production, Psunspot might as well be an XTC record set in the '60s. The Dukes are riding a retro wave that they helped to create, so rather than letting their altered egos be dismissed as a cute hoax, Sir John Johns (a.k.a. Andy Partridge) and his Lonely Hearts Club Band reflect on that era without being regressive. Although John Leckie (here, Swami Anand Nagara) remains as producer, the Dukes have said it's time the love bomb was dropped-time to sell records to more than just the XTC fan club. Dissecting this LP is a chore, as these guys borrow from everywhere, including the Beach Boys' vocal harmonies and layered production ("Pale And Precious") and loads from the Beatles songbook (the tin pan alley piano and oompa-doompa tuba of "Obla-Di Obla-Da" on "You're A Good Man Albert Brown," the "I'm Only Sleeping" guitar on "Shiny Cage," lots more), incorporating all into the unmistakable bent pop whirlybird of XTC. So drown yourself in the paisley ocean of love, and eat your lifesaver. Top cuts: "Vanishing," "You're My Drug," "Braniac's Daughter."

Through The Hill is neither the pop wizardry of XTC's Andy Partridge backed by the minimal piano tones of Harold Budd, nor the improbable musical middle ground between those two. A primarily instrumental project sprung from the titles of illustrations found in antiquated texts, Through The Hill may seem it'd be conceptually pretentious, but the results are surprisingly inoffensive. Track titles like "Well For The Sweat Of The Moon," "Bronze Coins Showing Genitals" and "Missing Pieces To the Game Of Salt And Onyx" seem overbearingly high-concept, but the majority of the tracks are warm, pastoral and inventive. The meandering and warbling pieces featuring sensuous Hammond organ are particularly welcome, reminiscent of the best moments from Robert Wyatt or former Budd collaborator Brian Eno. If Through The Hill seems fragmented, it's because it's based upon fragments, rough sketches and bits of unearthed archeological paraphernalia. The duo's often perverse arrangements and spooky snippets of percussion made by bells, gongs and other assorted oddities help keep the pieces from drifting off into new age drivel.
- Steve Ciabattoni

XTC
"Cherry In Your Tree"
Carmen Sandiego Out Of This World

The Seven Years War

XTC ends its strike with a revealing book, a four-CD set of live BBC recordings, and a new studio album.

After the success of 1992's Nonsuch, XTC went to Virgin Records (its home in the UK) and pitched ideas for new projects and asked if it coudn't have a better contract, please. After all, the band had been with the label longer than Richard Branson! Virgin yawned and XTC went on strike for five years.

"I thought, 'We'll just keep stockpiling [songs] and they're gonna let us go one day,'" says chief songwriter Andy Partridge.

"The worst thing," says Colin Moulding, "was they had some of Andy's songs. They were going to use that as a bargaining position to get what they could before we left."

"Everyone said, 'This is the end of you, everyone's gonna forget you,'" says Partridge. "'You'll never get a record deal because no one will be interested in a has-been band.'"

Not making records left time for Partridge, Moulding and bandmate Dave Gregory to chat with Journalist Neville Farmer for his book Song Stories, an XTC fetishist's delight, loaded with interviews that get to the bones of every XTC song ("Pink Thing" is about Andy's penis and his son, for those who care). "Neville has this thing where he tries to belittle you in a way," says the soft-spoken Moulding. "A lot of the song titles we discussed with him in a positive way and he'd wrap it up in a negative way," he says, later flipping through the book to point out a backhanded phrase.

"I like the fact that it's sort of beautifully flawed," says Partridge, explaining that none of the interviews were airbrushed. "And there's a few surprises," he continues. "Because you think, 'Blimey! Did Dave really think that?'"

Partridge took another dive into the past when the BBC sent over tapes that would make up Transistor Blast (TVT), a four-CD collection of live performances, including a complete 1980 concert. "Enough time - enough phlegm - has gone under the bridge to listen to this old naive, energy-packed stuff," says Partridge. "I kind of enjoyed it. There was something kind of thrilling in the sort of playful violence of it all - exhilarating in a kind of idiot way."

Other things filling Partridge's time during the strike were an illness, a burst eardrum and a bitter divorce. XTC finally inked a new deal and began recording Apple Venus Vol. 1 (due in February on TVT), but there were to be two more casualties. Producer Haydn Bendall couldn't finish the project and waved goodbye, and Dave Gregory decided he'd had enough of not having enough input and left the band. The album was finished by Partridge and Moulding using everything from Colin's front room to Abbey Road Studios.

"With this record there was a kind of air of middle-aged desperation," says Partridge. The long struggle and the pressue of not having made a record for years had its impact. "There was a greater expectation [for me] building up to doing Apple Venus than there was building up to the very first album that we did," says Partridge, clenching his teeth to drive the point home.

Apple Venus is primarily acoustic and seasoned with the orchestrations that recall the highlights of Nonsuch and Skylarking, though somehow more modest and more ambitious at the same time. The "push your car from of [sic] the road" nursery rhyme "River Of Orchids" is a clever crisscross of three cyclical melodies that comes off like Philip Glass writing pop tunes. "I think the record is going to surprise people," says Partridge. "They'll probably think it's really middle-of-the-road or dead square."

No one, however, could consider "Your Dictionary" a middle-of-the-road song. For all the bile Partridge has for his former label and the music business in general ("It's the devil's asshole of an industry," he says with an all-too-knowing grin), it's nothing compared to the venom spilled in the song towards his ex-wife. "It was written in a real rage when I was a cuckolded husband," he notes bluntly. "I believed in it for five minutes, but when I got a bit happier about the situation I begain to feel a bit embarassed by the lyrics thinking, 'Oh, that's a bit petulant.'" The unflinching ditty makes "How Do You Sleep?" (the Lennon swipe at McCartney) sound like "Wind Beneath My Wings." Choice lyric: "F-U-C-K, is that how you spell friend in your dictionary?" Partridge concluded, "My relationship with my ex-wife is not great but I know when she hears this -- the shit's really gonna fly."

The second volume in XTC's comeback opus finds the perennial pop underdogs returning to the electrified Beatle-pop drive of their '80s prime after lulling fans with a bittersweet symphony on 1999's Apple Venus Volume 1. But while Wasp Star is instrumentally more akin to the amplified quirk of English Settlement and Oranges And Lemons, the poetic fortitude and lush beauty of Apple Venus remains a constant on the second volume, albeit in a more stripped-down form. Recorded in Colin Moulding's renovated garage studio, he and partner Andy Partridge's 12th proper album is filled with future classics like the giddy, quasi-Stones romp "Stupidly Happy" and the Lennon-esque blues medley "Wounded Horse." If you're one of the few who thought XTC was making that beeline towards the MOR nursing home, wait until you feel the sting of this wasp's saccharine venom.
- Ron Hart