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

Science Friction

I'm always amazed how these upstarts from Swindon were so musically tight at such an early age. And I'm quite glad that they never fell for that "anyone can play punk" ethos that seemed to be a badge of honor in those days. What does one do, day after day, hour after hour, to keep the boredom at bay in dreary Swindon? Rehearse until your fingers bleed.

And we clearly have a leader who is already fixated on arrangements and song craft. This is the joy of these early LP's.

Of course these things wouldn’t fully bloom until Andy finally released the post-punk trappings that seemed to be suffocating the beautiful things in his head. But that artistic drive, born from comic books, army men, mommy issues and medications was a life force.

2/5

 

I'm among the folks who didn't really think they blossomed until "Drums and Wires," but I still got the first two albums (and EP by extension). They don't hit me the way that stuff does from 1979 on, but "Science Friction" is one that I really like from this period.

4/5

 

XTC knew their way around an earworm “hook” from the very beginning; a talent that would reach breathtaking levels in a few short years.
The little guitar riff that zips and darts throughout the song will be stuck in my head for some time now. This is (already) some Peak Angularity.
3.5/5

 

Science Friction

A nice jaunty new wave song with a catchy hook. There's a lot to like about this one. The band has a long future ahead of them and will develop a lot.

The solos, both keyboard and guitar, are short and to the point. The keyboard solo in particular is appealingly deranged.

4/5

PS: As a self-introduction for this thread, like @jimbutsu I'm most familiar with Drums and Wires, and Black Sea was the only XTC album I bought when young - my older brother owned White Music, Go 2, and Drums and Wires. Later I bought a number of albums but as my collection had grown by then I didn't really get familiar with them. This thread should be an opportunity to fill in the cracks.

 

Science Friction = 3/5. I came into XTC at Black Sea and then went back to D&W and Go 2 (an album that has some real gems on it). The first EP and LP didn't really resonate with me, thought the album version of This Is Pop is amazing.

I'll get my sad XTC story out of the way: In 1982, XTC were on their English Settlement Tour. We were REALLY excited and a group of us bought tickets for the Hollywood Palladium show. General admission - we showed up early (daylight) in order to get to the front of the stage.

We also brought some beer and after a few, I had to, er, go - so I headed out back to find a discreet spot (which I was able to do). Lo and behold, as I'm wrapping up, out come the 4 guys from XTC from soundcheck - like we come face to face. They seem very nice but very pasty/tired looking - we chatted for a bit - got their autographs. I go back and tell friends and nearby crowd of my chance encounter.

And so - they go back to the hotel for dinner (down the street). Apparently Andy collapses.

Then they open the doors to the Palladium - we run to the very front. We see the awesome English Settlement stage decorations. OOOOO EXCITED!!!

Until a guy comes onto the stage and says "very sorry, but there will be no show tonight. Refunds can be had....etc"

We were crushed!!!!!!!!!!! And I'm like "HEY!!!!!!!! I just met them out back!!!! What the heck? This can't be right?!?!?!?!"

Of course, tour cancelled - never to tour again. SO BUMMED out - to this day. (A group of us are going see Terry Chambers EX-TC band in March, Covid willing).

Anyhow - that's my XTC story...

 

Oddly enough, I ordered one from Discogs just last night, before I even saw this thread. It's streaming on Spotify, but I'm looking forward to the physical copy with the liner notes ad everything.

 

After a decade of fandom, it was the “Transistor Blast” 4CD box that finally unlocked the pre-Drums & Wires era for me. Suddenly I couldn’t get enough! Yeah, it’s the difference between “She Loves You” and “Strawberry Fields,” but sometimes you just wanna shout “yeah yeah yeah” instead of getting lost in a dreamscape, y’know?

None of their stuff hits that 5/5 echelon for a while yet, but they came roaring out of the gate with a classic of its kind. Science Friction 4/5 for me.

 

Great band, was playing the Steven Wilson Drums and Wires blu ray last night for hours in fact.

 

Just want to say I really like the dub stuff of XTC.

When I was a youth with developing taste in the mid 80's I got wildly into the band. Collected every album/single I could get here in the Netherlands. Sometime during/after Skylarking my taste developed more into the heavy dub/electronic music side of things and XTC slowly faded from my playlist so to say. Funny thing was that the weirdest B-sides from the singles and the dub experiments from them were closest to the things I liked in music by then (and still do).

Another funny thing. A major band for me during these transitional times was Meat Beat Manifesto. His first album was mind blowingly good. Totally new electronic industrial mayhem and a big influence for that style of electronic music for years to come. Turned out that MBM came from Swindon and Andy had played quite a substantial role in helping him out in the early days of his career.

I can still happily listen to XTC (up until Skylarking/ 25 O'Clock), maybe partly for sentimental reasons as it turns out I'm not that much into the later stuff though I keep hearing people say it's well on par with their earlier stuff. Their dubby/weirdo tunes I can happily say I'd even enjoy without sentimental reasons. So concluding; yes, at least one person really enjoys those tracks!

 

Science Friction had a great influence on me and I am going to get my XTC stories out of the way early so strap yourselves in ....
About the nearest I have to rock'n'roll claims to fame are that, as a child, I lived next door to Andy Partridge for a short while in Penhill, Swindon. And Colin Moulding's father was the janitor at my high school, Headlands (long since demolished for houses). Andy is older than me so he was always one school ahead of me and I didn't know him well. Anyway, as a fresh sixth former at Headlands high school one day I walked into the common room and Neville Swan had two 12" singles he played on the old all-in-one Garrard record player: X-Ray Spex 'Oh! bondage Up Yours' and 'Science Friction'. I thought both were a joke but I was not to be the same again and I left behind my prog-rock leanings and joined the new wave. I dug out, cleaned and played my copy of Science Friction recently and it sounded great.
A few years ago while listening to Fossil Fuel I was struck by the lyrics of Life Begins at the Hop - even though I'd heard it many, many times before I realized that in Penhill the church is on a corner and there was a Saturday night dance for teenagers - the hop! Whenever I listen to 'The meeting Place' and am momentarily transported back to those times by the hooter/whistle that starts the song. That was the sound could be heard all over Swindon every morning to start the shift at the railway works, I'd hear it clearly as I was getting ready for school.
Now back to the songs.

 

@Tristero and @redmedicine pretty much speak for me, though I don't rate this particualar tune quite that high. I'm not sure which single I heard first: "This Is Pop" or "Statue of Liberty" or "Life Begins at the Hop," but to me those more perfectly realize the potential in XTC's utterly unique approach. 2.8/5.

And therefore "Quicksilver," "Braniac's Daughter," and of course "That's Really Super, Supergirl."

Drums and Wires was the first great album, but I think "Are You Receiving Me?" is about as good as anything on it, and it was a big step toward Drums and Wires.

 

The radio station I eventually worked for was big on 'Senses Working Overtime' and I was obsessed with the tune until finally obtaining a Geffen reissue of Waxworks several years later. I instantly recognized 'Nigel' and 'Generals & Majors' but until then wasn't aware they were by the same band. Their few radio hits tended to be dropped after their run and never heard again. Anyway, side one, track one of course is 'Science Friction' and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I certainly didn't have a preconceived notion of what XTC should sound like but it definitely wasn't this.

It would be several more years before I learned that Barry Andrews was on the first two albums and that the XTC "sound" really begins with album #3 but I didn't dislike it at all. Within a year I found a used Beeswax import and I was able to paint a bigger picture until acquiring all the LPs up to Skylarking (recorded in nearby Woodstock, NY) and really getting a chance to appreciate XTC's artistic growth. Anyway, I'll offer up a 3.5/5 and look forward to the journey of a band that for years only I seemed to know about

 

I actually love science Friction; the funhouse keyboards, Andy’s solo thst sounds off the cuff, the quirky hook.

 

Our votes for "Science Friction"
1-0
2-1
3-10
4-7
5-1
Average: 3.35

 

Today's song is "She's So Square", written by Andy Partridge and produced by John Leckie.

XTC – She's So Square Lyrics | Genius Lyrics

Background:
The B-side of "Science Friction", and also released on 3D EP, this was later included as a bonus track on CD versions of White Music as well as the compilation Beeswax: Some B-sides 1977-1982.

Line Up:
Andy Partridge: vocals, guitar
Barry Andrews: synthesizer
Colin Moulding: bass, backing vocal
Terry Chambers: drums

Notes:

• Kath McGowan was the host of the UK TV program Ready, Steady, Go!
• Lord Sutch is Screaming Lord Sutch, a singer who perennially stood for election as head of the Monster Raving Looney Party.

 

"She's So Square" is actually incredible. I love just about everything about it. The keyboard/guitar intro/coda which sounds, frankly, like it belongs to a different song but is really beautiful and the instrumental break is just amazing....the song is another hook-fest, -- that guitar riff!-- and actually, I think I like it better than the A-side, for some reason.

The lyric is a bit silly when I listen to it as a nearly 51 year old, but I also can remember a time when being cool and stylish meant more to me than it does now -- not that I was ever cool or stylish, mind you, except accidentally when my uncle's flannel hand-me-downs from the seventies became the height of fashion.

Andy (and Colin's) voices are a bit limited at the best of times, and his vocal affectations on here detract a bit from the song, but then again, in the context of punk rock and it's aftermath, I suppose you kind of had to sing kind of in an affected manner -- especially in a song so self-consciously about a youth movement you're trying to fit into. Funny that their later music would adopt so many of the sounds and sensibilities of the sixties.

4.3/5

 

What a blast of fun this is! I love the instrumental break, especially the keyboard. And what a great way to end the song - 3.5/5.

 

I suspect Cockney Rebel were in there somewhere too. Note the offbeat guitars, rinky-dink organ and Steve Harley's affected vocals, then imagine it sped up...

 

Steve needed to practice his lip-synching!

 

"She's So Square"

A great track - from the ultra-catchy intro to the odd time signature changes in the run-up to the chorus, and that instrumental break. Much of the song is similar to "Science Friction", but a bit better I think.

What's amazing to me is the lyrics. This was 1977 - I don't think there had been any kind of 60s revivalism by this point? And Andy is singing about ten years ago as though it's a different world! Imagine writing a song today about someone who thinks it's 2011 - what cultural touchstones would you use to illustrate the difference?

 

Science Friction. 4/5.
She's So Square. 3.5/5. This has lyrics in the verses? huh.

The band had quite a unique sound at the time. It's not quite punk - the sound too happy not fitting in with society to resent it - but not really new wave either - they don't have the detached cool of those bands - but far too 'clever' to prefigure post-punk. Whatever it is, it's fun, it's energetic, cartoonish and very appealing.

Probably the closest link I can see them having is Split Enz, who on their first and second albums sound like they're ripping off Cockney Rebel too, but XTC decided to dump the prog aspect and go for a twisted, nervous pop first. Split Enz would soon follow.

 

And, is the person in my avatar.

She's So Square

Another piece of great and catchy rhythm new wave with a great hook. Not as good as Science Friction, but a worthy song in its own right and a good b-side not much less than the a-side.

I hear electronic piano here. Given the age of the recording, I *guess* that this is real electric piano, not synth.

3.7/5

 

A really good comparison!

 

I've been reading some online memes lately where many people online seem to have reached the conclusion that the world effectively-ended in 2012: a general sense that something went completely wrong and things are falling into widespread insanity very quickly. The theories are entertaining: a CERN-Produced slip into the Berenstain Bears universe; the Mayan Calendar thing; the spread of mobile phones; Tumblr driving Millenials nuts; or the fact that the American Government legalised the use of Propaganda against the American people about the same time.

Myself? I wrote a joke song in 2010 posing as a fake single from 1979 I'd bought at a garage sale, which was making fun of how quaint and incredibly-dated the whole idea of 'gender-bending' was. *shrug*

 

I'm in! I know certain XTC albums backwards and will contribute when we get to them, but I don't own any of the first three, though I do have Waxworks and Beeswax. I've been meaning to get a vinyl Drums and Wires for years but never got round to it.
Was listening to Oranges and Lemons last weekend...... still trying to get into it !!!