XTC
Wasp Star (Apple Venus Vol. 2)
On Sale Now
For $12.28

Okay, I admit it. I was one of the few naysayers who didn’t like last year’s much lauded comeback by these Brit pop godfathers who spent much of the 90s trying to break free from their record contract. I found the so-called orchestral acoustic pop of Apple Venus Volume One to be sterile, half-baked, mostly tuneless easy-listening claptrap. To my ears XTC sounded sadly older, past their prime, like they’d been isolated from other humans and like it had been a long time since they listened to any good music.

Well the good news for anybody out there who agreed with me is that Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding are back on the right track. While it may not scale the heights of classic 80s works like Skylarking or Oranges and Lemons, Wasp Star has a lot of what XTC does best.

The opening track "Playground" features chunky guitar (Partridge plays most of it himself now after the departure of longtime guitarist Dave Gregory), clever lyrics and Moulding’s lush intertwining harmonies. Partridge sings about the place where he was "marked by the masters and bruised by the bullies." The song concludes with the line "you may leave school but it never leaves you." Although that sentiment may not indicate it, the song immediately sets a lighter, more playful tone for the record after the gloomy, more serious Volume One. Partridge’s daughter Holly guests on the track.

"Stupidly Happy" is built on a simple, catchy riff that sounds like something Keith Richards discarded. The interwoven vocals and harmonized "doo-doos" on the fade out provide further evidence that the real XTC is back.

The bouncy, harmonica-laden "In Another Life" is the first of three Moulding-penned numbers on the record. The less-than-prolific Moulding seems to be working a sort of up and down, music hall Kinks/"Penny Lane" style of music these days. His "Frivolous Tonight" was to these ears one of the few bright spots on Volume One. On Wasp Star, his songs seem extremely low-key when juxtaposed against Partridge’s bright mini pop operas. On first listen they appear so light, they might float away. But the songs actually reveal more on repeated listens. That’s particularly true of the quiet, bluesy "Boarded Up," which uses a clomping board sound effect as the only percussion. Moulding uses an effective lower range to sing this tune about a music venue that "has had its day." And "Standing In For Joe" has an early 80s sound and a melody that recalls Steely Dan’s "Barrytown" or maybe Til Tuesday’s "Will She Just Fall Down." It’s a clever ditty in which the narrator finds himself having an affair with his best friend’s girl.

One of Partridge’s best contributions here is the first single "I’m the Man Who Murdered Love," which harks back to the sound of other great XTC singles like "Mayor of Simpleton" and "Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead." In the middle of the song Partridge rips into an incongruous guitar solo that sounds like Brian May of Queen playing something vaguely Middle Eastern.

Even more interesting is "Church of Women," Partridge’s Lennon-esque hymn of praise to the fairer sex that features some of his best guitar fills and a Steely Dan-like solo. The off-kilter verses give way to a killer chorus and cascading harmonies.

But the album’s best song may be "The Wheel and the Maypole," which is actually two songs fused together in the mold of their own Skylarking or an obvious influence, the Beatles "A Day In The Life." The choruses of the two songs spiral together nicely as the song fades out.

The McCartney-esque "Wounded Horse" and the poly-rhythmic "We’re All Light" are two of the weaker tracks on the record. The latter features perhaps the single weirdest lyric I’ve heard this year: "Just a couple of lips away is an evolutionary Bean Feast whose insides are jumping." Ummm… okay. "My Brown Guitar" contains more of those pretty harmonies that could only be XTC but nonsense lyrics that mar the overall effect. And "You and the Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful" has a chorus on which Partridge sounds exactly like Sting. But I guess you can’t win ‘em all.

Overall, Wasp Star is a major improvement over Volume One. For the most part, it’s rhythm-guitar rock that for an XTC record is understated and uncluttered. Sure there are ornate touches at the edges, a flugel horn here, a theremin there. Not to mention the string sections, guitar fills and layered vocals. But considering that many of these songs date back to the sessions for 1992’s Nonsuch and have probably been demo-ed to death, they surprisingly don’t sound over-rehearsed or over-arranged. And they somehow manage to have a certain spontaneity and a character that is uniquely XTC. With the mature but youthful sound of Wasp Star, XTC shows that perhaps they aren’t past their prime after all.

Check out the band's web site at www.tvtrecords.com/xtc

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