XTC made eccentric, quintessentially English pop music. They journeyed through punk, tribal pop, psychedelia, chamber pop and all things in-between. Utterly unique and influential, their legacy is due re-evaluation and new appreciation. Listen kids...THIS IS POP!
Words & curation by Keith, cover art by Lee Smith!
Recently, the career of Phil Collins was given another significant boost by the reaction video by TwinsthenewTrend (approaching eight million views). Since the reaction went viral, In The Air Tonight has seen a spike in streams and Collins is enjoying another wave of radio play around the world. What I would really love to see those boys react to though, would be XTC’s ‘Senses Working Overtime’. It would blow their brains, even more than Phil did.
I’ll never forget when I first heard that record. I’d bought the 45 RPM single without hearing it (having already been the proud owner of ‘Sgt. Rock’) and I can picture it dropping on to my automatic turntable. For the first 30 seconds or so, I may recall wincing slightly at the weirdness of it. That medieval chord strum and Andy Partridge’s affected singing style. And those lyrics. “Hey hey, clouds are whey, there’s fodder for the cannons and the innocents can all sleep safely”. Say what!? Of course, it then builds to a much more tuneful pre-chorus and then, that glorious catchy chorus itself. Andy Partridge wrote ‘Senses’ to order, as Virgin Records felt that the album English Settlements lacked a single. “I thought I’d do a counting song, but not 5,4,3,2,1. I’d go the other way ‘round, 1,2,3,4,5. What do we have five of...senses”. Bingo! The 1982 single with the strangest pop verse ever is still XTC’s biggest hit in the UK, the only top ten track they had. I love it and so does everyone in my house.
When Andy Partridge writes music, he hears it in colours and pictures. This is because he is a synesthete - meaning a signal or communication in one of his senses (in this case his ears) leads to involuntary responses in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Hardly a disadvantage, musically speaking, it is part of his magic powers, his genius. Yet XTC was much more than Partridge. It may have been his band, but he was supported by formidable bandmates. Colin Moulding could write a good song - and he could write a hit song. That’s why Moulding punched above his weight when it came to XTC singles. Indeed, at one point Virgin (mmm, a theme of Virgin records ‘micro-management’ in XTC’s workings is emerging here) had Moulding marked for the band’s leader - since he had an appealing voice and was the ‘good looking one’. But the band (at the time) was completed by Dave Gregory - a fantastic guitar player and musical arranger, and Terry Chambers who, in Partridge’s own words “could whack ten bails of a drum kit”. No wonder XTC titled one of their earlier albums Drums and Wires.
Drumming was a central plank to the XTC sound in fact and was instrumental to their breakthrough. The band hired Steve Lillywhite (working alongside engineer Hugh Padgham for Drums and Wires, specifically to find a drum sound that would "knock your head off"). Townhouse Studios had a ‘stone room’ in which the drums bounced back of the walls and with Chambers playing a complex ‘backward’ drum pattern on the lead single, Moulding's ‘Making Plans for Nigel’, a sound was established that would become signature to the biggest pop records of the 80s - including Phil Collins ‘In The Air Tonight’. Every pop band on the scene wanted that sound, from Peter Gabriel to The Police. Those drums also embellished XTC’s sometimes tribalistic sound, on tracks like Sgt. Rock and Runaways.
Commercially, the XTC story is one of the record industry’s most shameful disaster stories. Their financial woes began when Partridge took ill (he had near psychotic episodes due to withdrawal from half a lifetime taking valium, daily) and the band had to abruptly cancel a US tour, incurring debt as a result. That was just the beginning. There’s little point going into detail (as Partridge says in the documentary film This Is Pop “I know who the villains are”) but XTC had signed one of worst record deals in history (wasn’t Richard Branson’s Virgin Records supposed to be artist friendly?). Their renewal deal with Virgin was basically done with no hike in their low royalty rate, so that they could pay off their debts to the company. They were managed by a shark, and were left in deeper debt with each subsequent album they made, despite a string of mid-charting singles up until 1983, with the arrival of the distinctly less commercial album Mummer.
After the commercial failure of both Mummer and its successor The Big Express, Virgin (here we go again) offered the big hand of the man once more, assigning American legend Todd Rundgren to produce their next effort, partly to correct the band’s quintessential Englishness as well as their failure to produce obvious singles. So off they went to record at Rundgren’s Utopia Sound Studio in Woodstock, New York. Rundgren and Partridge clashed badly, but the latter later admitted that thee producer did essentially get the best album out of the band, at least up to that point. Skylarking was something of a classic - even if largely unrecognised as such. A concept album about growing up, with Rundgren pushing the band further musically, into orchestral arrangements and a wider, cinematic sound on some tracks. Once again, the record company’s problem was no obvious single, and ‘Grass’ was the first choice. However, in a twist of fate (just another one in the curious story of XTC), it was the B-side to Grass ‘Dear God’, which gave them an unlikely spike of success in America, adopted as a cult song by college radio. Skylarking is a work of pop genius, but yet again was a commercial flop. Things got so bad with Virgin that after making two more (slightly more successful) albums (Oranges & Lemons, Nonesuch) the band went on strike! At the time they were in good company with Prince and George Michael taking similar action against their labels too.
As XTC delved deeper and deeper into the studio (their live career was finished by 1982 due to Partridge’s illness) their songs became more elaborate in composition and production, but still retained their trademark hooks. For examples of pure pop perfection, how about ‘King For A Day’, ‘The Disappointed’, or ‘The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead’.
Their true studio masterpiece was still yet to come. It was a full seven years before they released an ‘indie album’, 1999’s Apple Venus, a stunning record perhaps equal to Skylarking in its ambition and final execution. It was released in a beautiful box format with a peacock feather and you cannot find the record on streaming services. If this playlist has inspired you to the ways of XTC, I recommend you buy the album on vinyl while you still can.
It’s unbelievable to think that Apple Venus was released over 20 years ago. XTC’s legacy is as quirky and erratic as their career - they are still revered by many fellow pop musicians, yet hardly embraced by those radio stations that spin 80s and 90s pop on a daily basis. As for ‘Senses Working Overtime’, its stream count is a tiny fraction what it could and should be. One TikTok or YouTube moment later and we could be hearing young people sing the song this world over. Their catalogue deserves some serious TLC, even if they didn’t receive such during their prime. Had the band’s commercial affairs been better managed, it’s hard to say if their output would have scored higher in the marketplace and their legacy would loom larger.
Yet they leave a body of work truly unique and always influential.
XTC: This Is Pop - the documentary directed by Charlie Thomas and Roger Penny, can be seen on Sky Arts / Now TV
Drums And Wires is the tenth in a series of XTC classics to be issued on 200g vinyl through Ape House