XTC Song of the Day thread

War Dance - forgettable Colin tune. No crime here, just kinda blah.

I'll Set Myself on Fire - skippable Devo-esque Colin tune... not forgettable, just early post pop punk. It sounds like this song might get awesome at the 0:45 mark, but it doesn't.

 

Not real crazy about the studio version of "Set Myself On Fire", but the live b-side was incredible !!! I'd have to say it's one of my favorite live tracks from the Drums & Wires era. I think this was on the Towers of London single.

 

I agree that this is one of the songs that could have been removed and improved the album. Still, it's not all that bad and I like the keyboard hook (or is it an oboe?) and overall production.

 

Across the Antheap isn't an immediate XTC track for me, but at the same time it's a nice listen, with nice vocals from Andy. It features a great bass line and harmony's from Colin lift up the tune. Not one of the best, but far from the worst.

War Dance is kind of a dud, it start's out nice from a musical perspective, but goes downhill as the song progresses. The lyrics just don't fit well for some reason. If a few tracks were to be culled from Nonsuch this would definitely be the first in the firing line. (and IMO the length is the biggest problem I have with this album and Oranges and Lemon)

I'll Set Myself On Fire I don't normally have a problem with vocals from XTC, but this song is just them in full on yelping seal mode! This is a another Colin song, but very rarely for him it doesn't seem to have much of a melody going for it. Sorry to say that makes two dud tracks from the Mouldster in a row for me!

 

Today's song is "Easter Theatre"



Andy Partridge thinks this is one of the best songs he ever wrote; he might be right. Everything comes together just right: the melodies, the playing, the orchestration, the flow, etc. And we even get a nice little guitar solo by Andy that sounds a little Brian May-esque to my ears (that tone!). Fantastic song!

 

I like this one. The orchestral arrangement is well integrated into the piece and Andy's singing and lyrics are a top notch. A highlight from Apple and Venus. Is that Andy or Dave's guitar lead?

 

Easter Theatre - This is the main song I think of when Apple Venus is brought up.

After previously telling God "I don't believe in you", here Partridge states "Now the Son has died, the Father can be born." Although this song isn't intoxicating power-pop, it's still definitely top-shelf Andy. It should sound glorious in surround with Steven Wilson at the dials.

 

Easter Theatre is the sort of song I admire more than I actively enjoy listening to. It's wonderfully evocative of springtime, but something about the melody doesn't quite appeal to me. Still, it's a critical part of the Apple Venus song cycle, so I never skip it when I listen to the album.

 

easter theater is maybe my all time favorite xtc song just so wonderful never fails to move me when I put it on.

 

Easter Theatre is absolutely fantastic, one of the top five songs XTC ever made. What astounds me is how they manage to record some of their greatest songs 20 years into their careers, most Pop Rock groups once they reach middle age tend to go into a decline from their golden age but with this album they managed to make perhaps their best album since Skylarking!

 

Considering the amount of complaints about the so-called overproduction of some tracks, I don't see why there is not much discussion here about the "Fuzzy Warbles" songs, since they provide a fascinating insight into what actually didn't make the cut, and, besides, they amply provide the kind of rawness and immediacy that red-blooded rock and pop music lovers seem to value above all else. And there are many good songs there that in my opinion did deserve fleshing out into full album tracks.

 

I agree. Wonder Annual is one of Andy's best songs and really should have been properly recorded. And then there's Young Marrieds, The Ship Trapped in the Ice, Prince of Orange, Sonic Boom, etc., etc., so many great songs that only exist in demo form.

 

And I was just thinking it was about time for a bonus/demo track...

Today's song is "Wonder Annual"



I will need to listen to this one a few more times to wrap my head around what is going on. Having listened to it just once, it is certainly interesting, but definitely seems like it could have been more refined and the rough edges smoothed out had it been properly recorded instead of being presented to us merely in demo form.

 

Andy: “Actually a song about female masturbation, yay! Let's have more of it. This demo dates from April 91, and along with the ‘Disappointed’, was one of the last two things written for Nonsuch. Oh... How I wanted to record this for that album, or Wasp Star, or any. It's one of my very favourite unrecorded XTC songs, so I guess it'll exist only in this form. If lust equals knowledge, then I side with the snake.”

 

...here I was about to say that this sounded like a bad Nonsuch outtake, and Andy goes and confirms it for me! I'm really not a fan of the vocal melodies Andy was writing around this time, and the song just sort of plods on (like much of the Fuzzy Warbles material, unfortunately).

 

It's not an either-or situation, necessarily. Apart from noting that O&L is the only album that widely suffers from charges of overproduction (complaints about The Big Express are usually more along the lines of "bad production," complaints about Skylarking usually relate to Todd's engineering abilities, etc.), it doesn't necessarily mean that the demos are any better. There are demos (recorded in one or two takes, mistakes left uncorrected), and then there are "demos" that are basically semi-polished, inferior-yet-essentially-identical versions of the final studio artifacts. Andy's demos usually fall into the latter category, and you can tell that they've been worked on quite a bit, meaning that there's not much immediacy in them. The exceptions are things like the "early cassette ideas" on Homegrown...and whilst they're interesting as historical items, I don't think I've ever listened to them for pleasure.

More than that, in the case of Fuzzy Warbles, I've found that whatever rawness/energy might be there is hidden by the compression/mastering. I'm glad we have the material, of course, and I don't mean this to say that I don't enjoy it at all. At times, I quite like hearing the demo versions of my favourite XTC songs, if only for some variety (particularly for songs like Smalltown, where we don't have any live or BBC alternates to enjoy). But there are some bands whose demos are genuine revelations (think the Sex Pistols)...and XTC, for the most part, aren't one of them.

 

Today's song is "The Man Who Murdered Love"



This song grabbed me right away, largely because the hook, which is so darn good, kicks off the song. It is what I call an "instant grabber." That said, the rest of the song is what I would call merely good. There isn't a lot of depth to this song; what you see on the first listen is what you get. Not that that is a bad thing, but it ended up being a song over time that I listen to less and less.

 

That pretty much sums it up. Since we were just talking about demos, I gave the three on Homegrown another listen. The "early other song cassette idea" was pretty much as dull as I'd remembered, and the "Tamla" version is a rather...interesting alternate take on the song.

The finished demo, though, sounds *much* better than I remembered. Most notably, the song is given space to breathe (quite literally; listen to the two back-to-back. The Wasp Star version is cluttered and suffocating, whilst the demo has plenty of empty space that makes the relatively sparse instrumentation all the more effective). More than that, the drums sound like an actual kit, and the use of acoustic guitars suits the song better than the electric guitars on the album (there are still electrics on the demo, but they're nowhere near as in-your-face). This is one alternate that is definitely worth revisiting.

 

I will have to find that demo version and check it out.

 

Today's song is "Love on a Farmboy's Wages"



What a gorgeous little song. Hard to believe that a) it wasn't the lead single from Mummer, and b) it didn't make a dent anywhere as a hit. As Andy has stated, the acoustic guitar definitely conjures up images of working on the farm, and he wrote lyrics and a song that fit those images perfectly. Outstanding!

 

Love On A Farmboy's Wages is a highlight from Mummer. Not surprising that Fairport Convention covered it -it's folky, pastoral and catchy as all hell.

 

Love On A Farmboy's Wages is exquisite, a lyrically clever and musically unforgettable song that's one of the highlights of their "pastoral" phase. Considering that it was an acoustic song released in a year that was dominated by new wave and synth-pop (at least on the UK charts), it's actually somewhat impressive that it managed to hit #50, when the much more commercial-sounding Great Fire didn't chart at all.

According to Chalkhills, the promo video version differs from the album version, though the only real difference that I could hear is that the ending is different. I thought that Andy's vocal on the "flask of wine" part sounded a bit more assertive and Andy-like on the video version, but I might just be imagining that.

 

Love on a Farmboys wages is one of very few post '70s singles I bought. By this time I was well into buying albums, but I couldn't resist the 12" version with the gorgeous embossed sleeve and I wanted to help get them into the charts. I remember a week or two after it had entered the top 100, getting more excited as the top 40 countdown went on and on and they'd not appeared, me naively sure they would chart in the top 20 with such a great song. Once the countdown hit the top five though my optimism started to burn away and when Billy Joel was announced as number one, despite me loving his music, I was hugely disappointed.

Of course eventually I was resigned to them never charting again, but at least they continued to churn out fantastic music. I sometimes wonder whether the fact they didn't get that commercial success had them on their mettle for such a long time. I don't think there's any other band who have been so consistent over such a long period of time. You see it here that although some people like certain albums much less than others, another section of fans think the same album is fantastic. Anyway, I'm rambling now, the song is fabulous. A nice interview about it here: Chalkhills: XTCFans: Andy's Take: "Love on a Farmboy's Wages" and in Song Stories.

 

Today's song is "Another Satellite"



For all of the greatness of Skylarking, this one seems to get lost in the mix whenever I see people talk about the record, and I can kinda see why. It's one of those songs that I never listen to on its own, but works really well within the flow of the record.

 

Oh, I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but despite it having some really fine songs, the production really puts me off Skylarking. Makes me think of Camberwick Green at times. I don't like the string sounds and in general I just can't get on with it. Had Hugh Padgham produced it, I think it would've been ten times the album. Of the Gregory period output this is the least listened to for me.

I prefer the Rag and Bone Buffet version of this song, which is Andy with some of those amazing, clever lyrics that makes me think damn, I wish I'd written this.