Senses Working Overtime: XTC and Dukes of Stratosphear Song-by-song

All those 1987 classics listed but no mention of this one?

 

"Pale and Precious" just nails it for me. From the time I heard it as a teenager I thought it was something special, and my appreciation of it has increased with my appreciation of where it come from and what it's made of. The pastiche, the harmonies - if it *didn't* do all that stuff that probably feels a little too derivative (if not outright on the nose) for some people, it just wouldn't be right. Lyrically it's also a reminder of time when I felt like that's how love should look and feel all the time, and that those sorts of feelings were around every corner. Don't get me wrong; I haven careened completely off the curmudgeon cliff, it's just that time and experience have shown me there's a lot more work involved than the song would have you believe. But Andy just nails it on this one. Never skip it, never tire of it when I listen to it.

6/5

 

"Pale and Precious" really is right on the nose, isn't it? I think my favorite bit is the melody ripped straight off the beginning of the "Heroes and Villains" verses ("I've been in this town so long that back in the city ...."). Part of me knows it's actually too good to be great, but wow does it ever hit its mark.

4.5/5

 

“Pale and Precious” is nice, though it comes a little short of being “great” for me. I don’t particularly like Andy’s tepid vocal in the verse, but the actual melody of it is very nice. The Beach Boys vibe is, of course, very on the nose, as other have brought up. I never really got into them, but their sound is fine. The “up she rises” part is neat; it’s probably my favorite part, though it eventually does get a tad old. Overall a good one, but not one I regularly return to.

3.6/5

 

Our votes for "Pale And Precious"
1-0
2-2
3-3
4-6
5-13
Average: 4.287

 

Today, Psonic Psunspot.

 

Psonic Psunspot was a step down from 25 O'Clock, but still pretty wonderful. Considering this was a side project, it's still as good or better as many successful artists' best albums - 4/5.

 

Psonic Psunspot is pop psyche lite compared to 25 O'Clock but still a very good album. It's as good or better than a few of XTC's proper albums. The average of my individual song scores is 4.15.

 

Did I miss the window for "Pale and Precious"? If not, a 5/5 for me. It rises above its pastiche-y roots to achieve real beauty. The only thing that lets it down for me is Andy's faux-Carl Wilson vocal. Wish he would've just sang it straight.

Psonic Psunspot as a whole merits a 3.5/5. Telling the same joke again always brings diminishing returns, and unlike 25 O'Clock, there are some genuine duds on this disc. "Vanishing Girl," "Little Lighthouse," "Collideascope" and "Pale and Precious" rank with my very favorite XTC tracks, but they're not enough to get me over the divots, and this is an album I rarely play start to finish.

 

PsonPsun is fun but not nearly as great as 25 O’Clock. 3.7/5

 

Psonic Psunspot (I'll be glad to not have to type that again!)

While 25 O'Clock had a soundscape which was dazzling at times, I didn't find anything in the songs themselves to engage me, which makes it a difficult album for me to love. That's not the case with PP - for the most part the songs are what I would expect to come from the writers of XTC, however the music is no longer a tribute/celebration of 1967 psychedelia, more a whistle-stop tour of various 60s bands and styles. It comes in the middle of a three-album run from Skylarking to Oranges and Lemons where they are treading a fine line between XTC and The Dukes, and I think it spends as much time on the XTC side of the line as it does the Dukes side. Ultimately I'd say I enjoy PP at least as much as Skylarking, so I will give it the same rating - 4/5.

 

And 'Wheel and the Maypole', one of the greatest last tracks by a band!

Psonic gets 4/5 from me in spite of all its flaws - it feels like a more mature album experience than 25 OC which has at least 2 songs I really dislike. Love the cover, the silly interludes, the sludgy purple vinyl, and I've only just discarded the cheap inner sleeve it came in. All the influences were absorbed into XTC from here on.

 

..... and The Go-Betweens Bridge is I think located in Brisbane.

 

Psonic Psunspot.

Loved it when it came out but didn't own it, eventually got hold of Chips From The Chocolate Fireball which I lost..... or had stolen. So didn't listen to any Dukes for a good couple of decades, acquired both of the albums on vinyl over the last five or six years. Psonic Psunspot hasn't aged so well, which sounds kinda strange as it was already meant to be aged when it was first released. I think we're starting to see the joins in the songs here. Still an occasionally fun spin and has several excellent excursions which always get my attention, but that first EP is the definitive Dukes experience.

 

When I first bought the album, i did feel a bit underwhelmed at first, but hey i spent money so i'd better try ....

And now its my favourite xtc album!

I believe the rule of 'no more than two tales at anything" actually made them braver about going further off-piste with their musicale ideas, and conversely why Andy P didnt want to do any more.

 

Oh, just in case it wasn't clear, 5/5

(I accidentally changed my predictive text onto Latin just now. That's actually a thing? "Non mores Thanatopsis theoria tales atque anything" my foro!

 

Psonic Psunspot

Psonic Psunspot is a lot of fun to listen to and, though I could go on about the fact that it doesn't quite straddle the genius line of pastiche and brilliance that 25 OÇlock did, at the same time it's more varied musically. Other criticisms that this feels more like "XTC-in-disguise" rather than The Dukes of Stratosphear (a super fine line) are valid.

But, In the end, it rates lower than 25 O'Clock only because I thiink a couple of the songs are sub-par, though neither of them are terrible. P

erhaps another EP rather than a full album might have made for a higher quality product but we got what we got and for the most part it's a nice, quickly recorded lark of a record. As a whole I believe the spoken word bits add to the album, not detract: they give cohesion to a wildly ranging bunch of styles. Definitely better than average.

4.3/5

 

Psonic Psunspot -- 4/5

Unquestionably a step down from 25 O'Clock, but still a fine record. Perhaps the easiest way to follow up Skylarking without the pressure of following up Skylarking.

 

Psonic Psunspot

There are a lot of great moments on Psonic Psunspot, but aside from Vanishing Girl, there are no tracks that jump out to me as classics. I was looking back at what I wrote for 25 O’Clock, and incredibly (or not?) my feelings about Psonic Psunspot are identical, so I’m going to say the same thing here: I’m admiring the music’s artistry more than I’m connecting with it emotionally. In no way does that diminish what they’ve accomplished here, but that prevents me from rating this one as toppermost of the poppermost.

As I said earlier in our discussion of Psonic Psunspot, I think the narrated parts stop the momentum, but it’s not a dealbreaker for me, so I’ll leave it out of my score.

4.25/5

 

This is so funny. The guy I attended Paul McCartney’s last show with happened to be at said rest stop Saturday, my first awareness of it existing, and here we are talking about it. Mr BJ came out to give Sir Paul flowers for his 80th Birthday. Needless to say they looked well fertilized

 

Psonic Psunspot is less inventive than 25 o'Clock, but for me it a more enjoyable listening experience. My favorites are Vanishing Girl, Have You Seen Jackie and Pale and Precious. Only a couple of weaker tracks, so I can't quite give it a perfect rating 4.5/5

 

Once more it's catch-up time... it's been a very busy month!

"Brainiac's Daughter": Again, absolutely no prizes whatsoever for guessing what the inspirations (both musical and lyrical) for this track were. While I don't rank it as being up there with the best of what AP is capable of, I find it to be quite an enjoyable track. It feels like if you fed a certain number of (very obvious) parameters into some form of artificial intelligence bot that produces music and this was the end result, but I suppose that description does the track a disservice a little.

"The Affiliated": This is actually my favourite of all of Colin's contributions to Psonic Psunspot, and while it does feel more like an XTC track than a Dukes track to me, I have zero problem with that. I particularly love that sudden change into the middle section that has some superb bass playing and percussive elements. It's definitely one of the songs on Psonic Psunspot that I keep returning to. Come to think of it, I think Colin's efforts might be stronger than AP's efforts on this particular record.

"Pale and Precious": Whoever describes this one as being on-the-nose above was on the money, the source inspiration for this one couldn't possibly be any more obvious. It's very difficult for an act that aren't The Beach Boys to pull off the Beach Boys style. When the Beach Boys do it, of course it's who they are. When anyone else does it, it just comes across as aping the Beach Boys. It's very hard for another artist to assimilate The Beach Boys sound into their music and make it feel like a part of their identity and not feel like it's merely some Beach Boys-y elements grafted on. Having said that, AP does very well coming up with something in this mould, even if the track does feel to me like a bit of an intellectual exercise in trying to write a Beach Boys song rather than being a genuine, from-the-heart piece of songwriting. In another sense, it feels like a bit of a dry run for future XTC efforts, most notably "Chalkhills and Children" (which I find to be a more heartfelt song than "Pale and Precious") and "Humble Daisy", not to mention the Apple Venus album. I'll comment more on those when I get to them, though. For now, what I'll say is that this was an ideal closer for the record.

 

Psonic Psunspot
I think this album has some high spots (hello Vanishing Girl!) and good moments, but as a whole it doesn't really speak to me. I'd like to say that it's because I haven't had enough listens of the album but I don't think that's the whole story. Everything in this thread is getting the same treatment from me (namely listening and discovering as we go) - for better or worse.
It's a good album but I don't find it compelling - it's bright and shiny sounds in parts don't lure me to listen to the album again. And in the back of my mind, I kind of can't help but compare it to 25 O'Clock which I genuinely enjoyed it (irrespective of the back story). Here I think the idea is a bit belabored even as the homage to the influences has got more sophisticated (case in point, Pale and Precious).
Like @brownie61 I find the narration annoying - that's part of my reluctance to listen to the entire album. It grates although I get the concept. Again a bit of a case of a joke/concept being taken too far for me.
I have the digital version of Chocolate Fireball and it's highly likely that I'll make a new playlist that includes 25 O'Clock and just a couple of the tracks from Psonic Psunspot.

3.1/5

A lot of people have mentioned that PP opened up a vein of creativity for XTC moving forward. Since I don't know what's coming, I sure hope so...because it's interesting music even if it's not entirely my cup of tea.

 

This x 1000. I do still love the album, but I can't believe that the band and John Leckie didn't hear during the making of the album, after multiple mixing sessions and playbacks, that this element would wear extremely thin after just one listen. Hell, after the first couple of times it came up on my very first listen to this album, I was ready to never hear it again.

 

Psunspot as a whole -- is a really good album even though on a track-by-track basis I didn't give everything a 5. 4/5 I think it's as good as Skylarking, tbh.