A selection of album
reviews, Transistor Blast to Apple venus (Vol 1.)
Sources indicated where known.
Transistor Blast, Record Collector No. 233 - January 1999.
Strange band from the beginning, XTC. With their seriously 'modern' art tendencies, quirky pop structures and Tom Verlaine-patented vocals, they ought to have been the archetypal new wave outfit, destined to flourish for a second or two of Jags-like fame, then be filed away in the depths of skinny-tie history.
But Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory had other ideas, even if they didn't always coincide with each other's. After the authentic post-punk blast of their first two albums, XTC developed into a modern, quirky and decidedly non-punk band - half a continuation of the classic British singles tradition that harked back to the Beatles, half some bizarre assemblage of Kraut-rock, prog and English whimsy. As the years went by, and rock neurosis took its toll, XTC became less a band and more an occasional hobby, a studio-bound concoction which would raise its head warily every few years and bring forth an album that had precious little connection with what the rest of the world thought was happening.
This budget-priced, half-familiar, cheaply-packaged and generally endearing set concetrates on the band's original incarnation, as a maddeningly eclectic, energetic, not to mention frenzied (especially when faced with an audience) collection of pop kids who were seized by the idea of punk, but not quite as comfortable with the reality. Andy Partridge's rather gauche rant at the beginning of a 1979 romp through "This Is Pop" illustrates part of the problem: they were already completely out of sync with what the media thought they ought to be. That only left their fans to alienate, and along the way, XTC tried fairly hard to get rid of them as well.
In 1978/79, when the third CD (taped at two BBC In Concert shows) was recorded, Partridge, Moulding and friends were still expecting to be genuine rock 'n' roll stars. If they'd kept turning out anthems with the breathless nerve of "Radios In Motion" and the finger-testing "Life Begins At The Hop", they might have managed it. Their sprawling attack on Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" showed that they weren't afraid of rock's past: and every other song in their early set looked forward to the future. Even if it wasn't their future.
The final CD has been out before: it documents another chaotic night-in-the-life, as Andy Partridge has a dose of flue blown out of his system by a hot 1980 gig at the Hammersmith Palais. This early in their career, they were already creating the kinf of left-field pop gems ("Generals And Majors", "Are You Receiving Me" and the albatross round their collective neck, "Making Plans For Nigel") which would fuel the rest of their career.
Which brings us to the first two CDs, filled (up to a point: 98 minutes across two discs isn't that generous) with BBC studio sessions covering the start of the decade, but they make more sense in this extended format - which strangely works better in this defiantly unchronological arrangement, so that near-punk and whimsical singer-songwriterdom are seen to come from the same twisted imaginations. Messrs. Partridge and Moulding provide some suitably acerbic notes, and only the bare minimalism of the packaging (art though it undoubtedly is) detract from the strange splendour of this collection.
Peter Dogett
Transistor Blast, Q Magazine Issue
148 - January, 1999
Radio work by new wavers who were a huge influence on
everybody. All right, on Blur.
Before vocalist Andy Partridge's stage fright became so physically debilitating that the band were forced to give up live performance, XTC were circuit regulars whose angular, experimental sound translated well to performance, largely because they mixed their jerky tin insect rhythms with top beat tunes and harmonies. This epic 4CD compilation collects concert material from Radio One with sessions material from "David" Kid Jensen, John Peel and other shows of the new-waved-up late-'70s. The real pleasure here is just how good XTC were live, Partridge's guitar sounding 10 times as jagged and brutal as.it seemed at the time, and how well these songs sound now, in a climate where everyone seems to have assimilated at least something of that jerky, Beatley, Eno-meets-Merseybeat sound. This box - essential to anyone for whom this period meant astonishing invention and discovering potential - not only makes an almost forgotten band come over fresher than an unlicked stamp but also contains the most accurate recorded parody of John Peel.
***
David Quantick
Transistor Blast, Mojo Magazine
Issue 62 - January, 1999
BBC sessions and live shows,
1977-89, in a 4-CD set retailing at £19.99
As we patiently await XTC's first studio offering in six years, here's some radio sessions and early live radio shows (some previously available, others not) packaged in a nice, radio-shaped box. This from a group who have avoided performing live for 17 years, and whose leader is so embarrassed by their debut, White Music, he recently begged for it to be switched off when played in his honour in a Bath restaurant (Simon's note: no he didn't. Andy makes this claim a few times each year, and it's always "recently".) Claiming now to have "forgiven" his younger self, he still considers early XTC akin to being "whacked around the head with a sherbert-dipped crowbar". However, behind the sinew-straining, attention-seeking vocal tics and the we're-different-us quirks, the rhythmic precision, sunny art-pop-punk energy and sackful of tunes still impress.
And the band matured beautifully. While I'm Bugged, Cross Wires, Science Friction are the charming sound of bright young things desperately trying to get up your nose, the twisted metal guitars of Roads Girdle The Globe, the brooding, Police-esque This World Over and a great acoustic Scarecrow People are the direct, unfussy, connecting performances of powerful songs. While there's nothing from 1992's Nonsuch ("They didn't ask us," said Partridge), it's these taut, emotionally focused, highlights rather than the flag-waving, crowd pleasing In Concerts that have you hopefully contemplating the possibility of future live presentations.
Chris Ingham
Apple Venus Volume 1,Interview
magazine - February 1999
Pigeonholing the skewed composing genius of stage-shy XTC maestro Andy Partridge is a bit like riding the Tilt-O-Whirl with a drunken, sadistic carney at full throttle. Spin one of his discs -- especially this new accoustic/orchestral experiment, and prepare yourself for some heady vertigo. Two decades on, Partridge's voice is still lovably loopy and acrobatic, his hooks still astoundingly oblique and original. His approach is epitomized in the opening track, which combines tip-toed symphonics, puncy brass exclamations, and nutty-professor observations such as, "the grass is always greener when it bursts up through the concrete." A must-hear for non-fans and fans alike.
Apple Venus Volume 1,
Stereo Review's Sound & Vision
- February / March 1999
(contributed by Jim
McKay and Annie Holloway)
It has been seven long years since the release of Nonsuch, after which XTC literally went on strike against their former British label, Virgin, fed up with what they saw as a debilitating lack of support. For much of that time, the band could only write and record unofficially at home. Then, with their legal troubles finally behind them last year and with the founding of their own imprint, Idea (distributed in the U.S. by TVT), guitarist Andy Partridge and bassist Colin Moulding were faced with the departure of lead guitarist Dave Gregory.
None of the setbacks should be worrisome to XTC's fans-in-waiting, however, because the band is back in a very big way. TVT has already released Transistor Blast, a four-CD box of live recordings from the BBC Radio archives. The band collaborated with Neville Farmer on an excellent new book, XTC: Song Stories (Hyperion), a track-by-track discussion of their entire career. And, after recording enough new material to fill a two-CD set, Partridge and Moulding decided to split the double album into two installments of Apple Venus, the "orchustic" Vol. 1 (early February) and the electric Vol. 2 (late 1999). Judging from the first batch, the self-imposed exile did XTC no creative harm.
It's "orchustic" because the tracks are primarily orchestral and acoustic. Oh, dear -- are we talking symphonic bloat? And, because Gregory handled the band's previous string arrangements and then left XTC partly because Partridge decided to do all the Apple Venus arrangements himself (leaving the non-writing and pro-electric Gregory with little to contribute to the sessions), are we talking amateurish symphonic bloat? No and no. One listen to the plucked strings and round-robin vocals of the opening "River of Orchids" and you'll share Partridge's giddiness in exploring new sounds and textures within a tableau that remains utterly XTC. There's also the catchy drone of "Green Man", which seems like a Middle Eastern sojourn but is actually, according to Partridge in Song Stories, more "pagan/Vaughn Williams" than Page and Plant. And from the subtleties of "Harvest Festival" and "The Last Balloon" to the lusher backdrops of "I Can't Own Her" and especially the wide-as-all-outdoors "Easter Theatre", the orchestral parts are sympathetic to Partridge's beautiful melodies.
For those who favor the band's more Beatlesque material, there's plenty to cherish as well. Moulding serves up a pair of his trademark treats in "Frivolous Tonight" and "Fruit Nut", both reminiscent of Cole Porter and Ray Davies strolling down "Penny Lane". Partridge's "Knights in Shining Karma", a change of pace on solo electric guitar, was inspired by the chords of Paul McCartney's "Blackbird" but also recalls John Lennon's "Julia". Most compelling, Partridge is capable of both the purest pop in "I'd Like That" -- celebrating a new love in harmonies, acoustic guitars, and thigh slaps -- and the bitterest indictment in "Your Dictionary", written in the throes of his divorce. I won't give away the contents of this dictionary, but you'll be struck by how Partridge, in our lackadaisically profane age, reinvests certain words with what must have been their original, disturbing meaning.
K.R.
(4 stars)
Apple Venus Volume 1, OUT magazine -December 1998
Rockers dabbling in classical music is nothing new - just ask Paul McCartney or Billy Joel. Not being pretentious or feeble, however, is an entirely different matter. On their first album since 1992's NONSUCH, Andy Partridge and pals masterfully mine more "serious" compositional territory without forsaking the pop simplicity of signature recordings like "Dear God" or "The Mayor of Simpleton". In fact, the subtle symphonic underpinnings of "River of Orchids" and "Your Dictionary" illuminate the beauty of Partridge's concise, Beatlesque tunesmithing far better than any traditional rock arrangement could.
Larry Flick
Apple Venus Volume 1, Uncut - March 1999
Apple Venus Volume 1, Mojo - March 1999
Orchestrally-based first album in seven years from Swindon's pop eggheads. The rockier Volume 2 is due later in the year.
To begin: a little ripple of water, a pause, another pause and a softly plucked double bass; like one of those ECM ambient jazz pieces entitled Awakening or Tranquil Fjord. As random-sounding pizzicato violins enter the picture, followed by parping, Young-Composer-Of-The-Year brass, one's eyebrows can't help but assume the sceptical position. But as the six minutes of River Of Orchids unfold - Andy Partridge's bold first song on this very-of-its-own-world album - more and more recognition and pleasure seep into the listening experience and various strands start to link up until, when Miles Davis/Gil Evans muted trumpets commence to swing low a la Porgy And Bess, the whole thing becomes an impossible triumph and you're willing to accept just about everything that XTC in 1999 can throw at you.
While there's nowt so queer as that opening track, Apple Venus Volume 1 finds Partridge and Moulding - far from attemtping to catch up with the pop world they left in 1992 - quite significantly advanced from it all, abundantly inspired and willing to experiment with (often dazzling) orchestral arrangements. This 11th album of theirs is a truly engrossing and suprising 50-minute song suite - a fully realised, brialliantly sustained flight of aural fancy.
As on Skylarking (1986), the XTC album to which it most compares, the colours here are green and brown and russet, and the songwriters' lexicon (slacks, sheds, braziers) paints a picture of singular England. With not much drums and only occasionally 'rock' guitar, the prevailing style is adorable chamber-pop suffused with a rustic glow: Eleanor Rigby meets Fairport's Angel Delight with mystical of Kate Bush (on the tour de force Green Man) and Common One-era Van Morrison.
The mood is, with the exception of one song, quite gorgeous. Moulding's two tracks are mong his best ever, one a charming West Country drinking song, the other a McCartney-on-the-farm tribute to happy domesticity. With Partridge, the ageing process is not so clear-cut. There are songs about mad lover and pairs of breasts; strange local rites ("Please to bend down for the one called the Green Man"); and hated bypasses and hard hats ("I want to see a river of orchids where we had a motorway"). But there's also the album's odd-lyric out, Your Dictionary, which suggests his seven year hiatus hasn't just been spent writing tunes and taking the air: "F-U-C-K, is that how you spell friend in your dictionary?"
But what's really noticeable, and this has been a sticking point on one or two XTC albums in the past, is how effortlessly pleasureable the work is as a whole. It's difficult to imagine any single from it, such is the long and winding spell. Skipping tracks is simply out of the question. And while the ratio of Partridge songs to Moulding songs (9-2) will probably never be anyone's idea of democratic, musically the two of them seem to be united here as never before, watching the world go by from some elevated gantry, a pair of fortysomething March hares who could show many a 25-year-old how a great album ought to be constructed.
Apple Venus Volume 1, Q 151- April 1999
First of two 1999 comeback sets from the Swindon cult, finally dunmped by Virgin.
XTC inspire such reverence from acolytes that it may be worth pointing out what has always bothered the unconvinced, viz, a certain cosy trickiness as displayed here on I'd Like That and Fruit Nut, with their prattle of toasting forks and sheds. Forget those and this is a fairly joyous first album since 1992, full of queer and enjoyable songs such as Knights In Shining Karma. Greenman, admittedly, does have the whiff of contrived psychedelia about it. Nonetheless, it's what a better Kula Shaker might sound like. All things considered, this is splendid; the band continuing their Beatles-esque mission to imbue pop with intelligence. Oasis should get Partridge and Moulding to produce their next album: the results would be awesome.
Stuart Maconie, 4/5
Apple Venus Volume 1, BBC Online -
February 1999
It's been a long time coming, but at last the waiting is over - the Partridge is back in season.
Andy Partridge, that is, who, together with co-conspirator Colin Moulding, has awoken XTC from its seven-year slumber.
During the time they've been away, thanks mainly to a five-year dispute with Virgin, the Stone Roses could have penned nearly one-and-a-half albums, while the Stereo MC's are well on the way to almost considering a follow-up to Connected.
Unlike Blondie, Led Zeppelin, Happy Mondays et al, XTC are not jumping on the reformation bandwagon - they never actually got round to splitting up in the first place.
And so, 24 years after they first got it together, 21 years after the criticially-acclaimed New Wave classic White Music, Partridge and Moulding have chosen to a show a creativity-starved nation what they are missing.
An orchestral juggernaut
Apple Venus Vol I - a second part follows later this year - is an orchestral juggernaut colliding head-on with a lorry-load of sagacious rhyming couplets and folky harmonies.
Eccentric opener River Of Orchids sets the wheels of weirdness in motion - imagine the school orchestra tuning up in your front room with Enya waving the conductor's baton and you're on the right track.
Easter Theatre, meanwhile, has an air of jolly pomposity about it and boasts a magnificent chorus which appears from nowhere and devours itself whole in anticipation of its next glorious entrance.
Off-the-wall influences
Partidge sounds more and more like a youthful Paul McCartney and the off-the-wall influences from Sgt Pepper are scattered throughout the album for all to hear.
Throw in a dash of mediaeval Eastern promise (Green Man), a pinch of Simon and Garfunkel from the wonderfully titled Knights In Shining Karma, and a couple of pub folk singers and the picture is almost complete.
Apple Venus has been described as 'Philip Glass writing pop tunes' - a fair comment, but one which fails to capture the genius of a master wordsmith at the top of his game. Not only does Partridge dare to rhyme "Harvest Festival" with "best of all", he also drily observes, "a man must have a shed to keep him sane", and: "S, H, I, T...is that how you spell me in your dictionary?"
There may be no Senses Working Overtime, Making Plans For Nigel or Sergeant Rock here, but these days XTC are more concerned with making music for pleasure than putting a huge dent in the top 20.
The pleasure is all ours.
Chris Charles
Apple Venus Volume 1, Calgary Sun - April 1999
(contributed by Jesús
Quintero)
The much-vaunted "orch-oustic" direction on XTC's first studio album in seven years is really nothing new, as the band has already blended orchestral and acoustic sounds with dazzling results on earlier songs such as Sacrificial Bonfire and Wrapped in Grey. But on Apple Venus Vol. 1, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding (guitarist Dave Gregory left during the sessions) apply the approach over the course of a seamless, concise 50-minute song cycle and the result is a monumental accomplishment, an album that'll float alongside English Settlement and Skylarking at the creamy top of the XTC canon.
Like those aforementioned albums -- not to mention Pet Sounds and the second half of Abbey Road, from which the new album draws much inspiration -- Apple Venus Vol. 1 demands to be heard in one sitting in the order the songs are arranged.
The music takes you up and down life's Big Dipper, sometimes within the same song. The acrimonious Your Dictionary is a spiteful missive to the former Mrs. Partridge, but has a clever coda that ends the song on a vaguely upbeat note.
More romantic is the unabashed love song I'd Like That, a sprightly pop tune in the mould of Love on a Farmboy's Wages; while the lushly orchestrated I Can't Own Her is possibly the greatest song Brian Wilson never wrote.
Nature, of course, is another perennial Partridge topic and with Easter Theatre he has written a masterpiece -- the entire life-cycle played out in an idyllic, sun-toasted countryside, with a chorus of such splendour that your heart will skip a beat.
By contrast, Moulding's two songs focus on life's minutiae. The better of the two, Frivolous Tonight, visits a cocktail party and contains the sort of keen, witty social observation you'd expect from prime-period Ray Davies, though the playful melody is pure Cole Porter.
One can only hope Vol. 2, a set of electric-guitar songs due this fall, shows the sort of ambition, imagination and craftsmanship exhibited here.By DAVE VEITCH
Apple Venus Vol. 1, Atlanta’s
INsite - March 1999
(contributed by Adam Sculley)
Class: A welcome blast from the past
After a seven-year strike against their former record label, XTC bathes in smaller indie waters with a bright, bubbly, and peppy album. Of course, this is in XTC terms – Andy Partridge consistently presents himself as the court jester, but as any Shakespeare fan knows, it’s the court jester who has the most ominous lines. Remember, this is the guy who wrote the world’s catchiest ode to atheism (“Dear God”). Apple Venus is well worth the wait, wrapping Partridge’s flights of fancy and bile in gorgeous textures. An intricate interplay of horns, strings, and vocals weaves through “River of Orchids”, while “I’d Like That” bounces along to slaphappy rhythms and a plaintive trumpet punctuates “The Last Balloon.” All in all, it’s XTC fulfilling their last mission of creating seemingly simple songs that are actually as complex as an English hedge maze. Most importantly, XTC continues to be brainy without losing their music’s heart. “Your Dictionary” maliciously asks “F-U-C-K is that how you spell ‘friend’ in your dictionary,” while “Greenman” nimbly matches its mystic namesake with a jaunty melody and stirring Eastern strings. For me, it’s as good as Skylarking – maybe more so, due to the enjoyment of being reminded just how good these guys are.
Andrew Gilstrap
Apple Venus Volume 1, Illinois
Entertainer - April 1999
(contributed by Adam Sculley)
Ending their seven-year strike against their former record company (Virgin), XTC eases back into the music business with their new album Apple Venus Vol. 1. The hiatus, while frustrating to avid XTC fans, took its toll on the band as well: key member Dave Gregory left (tired of the wait and the direction) and, more importantly for this new batch of songs, XTC main man Andy Partridge’s marriage ended in divorce. Inactivity begets such deterioration, and from the sound of Apple Venus, idling has the band at a bit of a standstill. Partridge and XTC have always copped to their obvious Beatles influence, and it’s all over Apple Venus. Fans of the band’s last album – 1992’s Nonsuch – will hear Apple Venus’ direct antecedents in songs like “Rook” and “Wrapped In Grey,” two songs that have always turned me off the overly long record. In the pop song idiom, orchestration always runs a risk of pushing the listener away rather than luring them in more deeply.
XTC’s music has always been at least interesting on the rhythm end, the innovative and sometimes eccentric rhythm beds churning underneath pure pop melodies being something of a trademark. There’s very little in theway of rousing rhythm on this new album. Apple Venus is primarily acoustic and heavily orchestrated. It’s a gentle album; its charms creep up on you with repeat listenings, though truth be told, there’s a dearth of charms.
“River of Orchids” opens the disc as a sort of standard-bearer for what you will hear over the next 50 minutes: sharp, plucked strings, muted, walking horns, and layered vocal and instrumental harmonies swirl intoxicatingly around the song’s circular construction. “Just like a mad dog you’re chasing your tail in a circle” Partridge sings, reflecting the lyric and music structure; “I want to see a river of orchids where we had a motorway” is his wish for a return to more natural ways. “Orchids” is one of three distinctly romantic – in the Wordsmith sense – Partridge songs on Apple Venus. The allegro “Easter Theater” describes the sensual circle of life, with oboe providing a buoyant bass line, and the mysterious, eastern-tinged “Greenman” (earth itself?) allures as much with the chunky, tribal percussion and sylvan texture as it does with the nebulous lyrics about building “beds of oak and pine.”
From the perch of his quiet home in Swindon, England, Partridge has often yoked the demise of the natural with the loss of innocence, which is why some of his most exhilarating music has been the most unabashedly romantic. The most exuberant song on Apple Venus is “I’d like That,” a rolling acoustic love song (a la The Beatles’ “Two Of Us”) that surges three or four times in glorious strum/vocal tandem on the word “sunflower” and fades out with tap-dance-sounding hand claps. Of course, it also contains the horrible line “I’d smile so much that my face would crack in two/Then you could fix it with your kissing glue” – BLECH! – but you can’t deny the sheer joy Partridge is celebrating. The school crush memory “Harvest Festival” (“What was best was the longing look you gave me/More than enough to keep me fed all year”) is another romantic
gem, and Colin Moulding’s jaunty, very British “Fruit Nut,” extolling the virtues of tending one’s garden (“A man must have a shed to keep him sane”), has a similar personal charm.The remaining half of Apple Venus seems in a bit of an orchestrated rut. The madrigal “Knights In Shining Karma” gets lost (especially lyrically) in its lilting, lullaby self; “Last Balloon,” despite a haunting flugelhorn ending, meanders listlessly; and the lush, dreamy “I Can’t Own Her” sounds like something from a Lerner & Lowe musical (with the same lack of emotional impact). Moulding’s “Frivolous Tonight” also sounds like a musical reject, but this one stars Bertie Wooster and the unflappable Jeeves. And though one can completely understand the spurned-heart venom of “Your Dictionary,” wherein Partridge spells out nasty words to sarcastically spear his ex-wife, it’s obvious, lunkheaded, and pretty much of a one-time listen.
XTC claims to have more of a proper rock album coming out later this year. Let’s hope the long vacation hasn’t muted their amps as well.
Michael C. Harris
5 Stars
Apple Venus Volume I, JAM, Florida’s
Music Magazine - Feb. 26 – Mar. 11, 1999
(contributed by Adam Sculley)
Throughout a two-decade career, XTC has been one of pop’s most diverse and unpredictable bands. After several early albums that featured jagged, edgy New Wave pop, the group shifted into a more melodic, but still forceful, guitar rock sound (best represented on the 1980 album Black Sea). From there, the band has shifted between folkier efforts (English Settlement and Skylarking), to dense rock (The Big Express) and album that have reflected the impact of latter-era Beatles and the Beach Boys on the band (Oranges & Lemons and Nonsuch). But even long-time fans may be thrown – at least temporarily – for a loop by the latest CD from Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding, and Dave Gregory (the latter of whom left the group part way through the project). On the long-awaited new CD, Apple Venus: Volume 1, XTC has virtually dispensed with electric guitars and created an album of orchestral songs.
According to Partridge, the idea of working in an orchestral setting began to take root during the latter stages of recording on the band’s previous studio CD, Nonsuch (1992). Indeed a few tracks on that CD, such as “Wrapped In Grey” and “Omnibus,” found the band beginning to weave orchestral elements into their music. “I suppose I was feeling a little trapped by electric guitars,” Partridge said in recent phone interview from his home in Swindon, England. “I wanted to hear the songs broader, more stereoscopic vision, a more Eastman color or whatever. Just before the making of Nonsuch, I bought a keyboard device with a lot of orchestral samples in it. I became familiar with these recordings of orchestral sounds. You get to know what oboes sound like, you get to know what cellos sound like, you get to know the difference between violas and violins. You get to hear effects of things together, flutes with glockenspiel maybe, and so on and so on. So I became a lot more familiar with those textures on the run up to Nonsuch. But most of the Nonsuch material was electric guitar material. But as soon as we finished Nonsuch, I was just gagging to leap in full, in the deep end.”
That said, Apple Venus was clearly one of XTC’s more complex undertakings – although it should be noted that much of the seven-year gap between the band’s studio albums occurred because the band refused to record for its previous British label, Virgin Records, while Virgin refused to let the band out of its contract. In fact, most of the music heard on Apple Venus was tracked in one marathon session at the legendary Abbey Road Studios.
“If you consider the album taking on and off, the best part of a year, the first few months were really taken up with plotting and mapping out what the hell we were going to do,” Partridge said. “Say for example with ‘Easter Theater,’ the woodwinds are going to be doing this, the strings are going to be doing this, and we would be plotting that out one note at a time and putting that in the computer and charting that out.
“I know it sounds perverse, but over the curse of a year of sort of fiddling at one end and fiddling at the other end, the big bit in the middle was one day at Abbey Road in which we actually recorded most of the album in one day,” Partridge continued. “I know that sounds perverse, but percentage wise that’s probably true. We recorded all of the orchestral stuff and all of the orchestral solo players and so on in one enormous, extremely tiring day at Abbey Road. And then it was sort of downhill gently the other side of that where we put the vocals on and little touches of percussion and so on.”
Just how deeply Partridge and Moulding immersed themselves in the new sounds they could create with an orchestra is apparent from the outset of Apple Venus: Volume 1. “River of Orchids,” with it’s plucked strings, interlaced horns, and multi-layered voices provides an intriguing, idiosyncratic beginning to XTC’s latest. It’s easily the most unusual song on the CD, but also quite effective.
By and large, the CDs other songs use a more conventional pop framework, but even in these settings, Partridge has found inviting ways to incorporate strings and horns into tracks like “Easter Theater” (one of the CDs best songs) and “Greenman” (which has a distinct and highly appealing Eastern feel) and “Harvest Festival” (which wraps one of the CDs prettier vocal melodies around gentle strings). Moulding’s two songwriting contributions to Apple Venus, meanwhile, inject an element of playful mirth. Both “Frivolous Tonight” and “Fruit Nut” are whimsical tunes that make fine use of cherry strings and horns.
Not all of the songs on Apple Venus work so well, however. The droning tones of “Knights In Shining Karma” never quite take hold and the CDs closing track, “The Last Balloon” is also a bit ponderous. Still, considering this is a n album that uses a strikingly different instrumentation vocabulary from the group’s previous CDs, one can only consider the album a highly successful effort. But according to Partridge, Apple Venus: Volume 1 may be just a one-album foray, and not the start of any lasting musical direction. He and Moulding have written a full slate of songs for Apple Venus: Volume 2 but that CD promises to bring electric guitar back into the XTC sound – with a vengeance.
“All of the material that was written really between ‘92 and ‘94 was my desire to work in this orchestral vein,” Partridge said. “Seeing as we really still weren’t legally allowed to make a record by ‘94, I think I started to want to hear cranked up guitars again. And all of the material that came out really between ‘94 and ‘96 was really quite basic in your face guitar material. That will be Volume 2.”
In other words, with Apple Venus: Volume 1 Partridge suspects he got his orchestral urges out of his system – at least for the foreseeable future.
“I think that’s what it was, I think it was just a couple of years away (from guitar),” Partridge said, trying to explain why the electric guitar started sounding fresh again. “Having a diet of these orchestral textures, it was a bit like being a vegetarian for a couple of years. I guess I just wanted a big fat sausage. I wanted a t-bone or something at the end of it.”
3 stars
Apple Venus Volume 1, NME - April
1999
It's an odd equation, but genius and laziness tend to go together. The reputation of Swindon's XTC as one of Britain's most inventive pop groups has been simmering gently due in no small part to the fact that they've done bugger-all for seven years.
However, no sooner do they venture out from in front of the TV than they've got two albums ready to release. 'Apple Venus Volume 1' is the first instalment in that double whammy, and while not entirely immune from Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding's nasty habit of hammering really hard on the twee pedal in moments of boredom, there's still enough of that psychedelic bumpkin magic to make this worth celebrating.
'Easter Theatre' is a classic example, ambling along like a lopsided Blur ballad before letting rip with a chorus so jubilantly massive that it defies adjectives. Elsewhere, XTC remain reassuringly weird, though the fact that opener 'River Of Orchids' sounds like Enya is possibly best ignored. Their final flourish comes with the transcendental 'Harvest Festival' which manages to make eyes meeting over a table of tinned peaches and digestive biscuits sound as momentous as Brian Molko being made England manager.
All of this and a second volume in the autumn. Bone-idle bastards but you've gotta love 'em.
7/10
Apple Venus Volume I, The Rocket
Magazine, October 1999
Apple Venus Vol. 1's opening track, "River of Orchids," features dripping water, pizzicato strings, burping trumpets and Andy Partridge's vocals all swirling in a demanding musical round that defies your foot to tap and your reason to ask yourself, "When did Phillip Glass and Steve Reich join XTC?" Then tracks two and three, "I'd Like That" and the record's best song, "Easter Theatre," reassure you that 1999's XTC aren't much different from the XTC that released the now-classic Skylarking album in 1987.
Being hailed as the "orchustic" half of two records (Apple Venus Vol. 2 promises to be the electric second half coming this spring), XTC begin their new era as a duo on an independent label with elaborate orchestral arrangements of some of their weakest songs ever. Partridge and Colin Moulding (who only contributes two songs) recycle 10-year-old themes and ideas: The closing tune, "The Last Balloon," is a rewrite of Oranges and Lemons' closing song, "Chalkhills and Children," and Moulding's "Fruit Nut" is a self-deprecating poke at XTC's preoccupation with fruit. Usually ultra-literate with a deft use of the English language, Partridge now resorts to an easy pun title like "Knights in Shining Karma" with nowhere to take it and shock-value lyrics in "Your Dictionary," spelling out curse words with indemnity for his ex-wife. The absence of Dave Gregory, who left during this record's making, is negligible, maybe arguable, because the "orchestra" sounds more synthetic than real, and the arrangements are as good as XTC's previous forays into lush instrumentation.
Given what XTC went through since 1992 (record label problems, divorce, member quitting), we should be thankful that Apple Venus Vol. 1 even exists and that more is coming. Even a mediocre XTC record is better than the psychedelic music of all the other Beatlesque bands out there, if there are any current bands left to compare them to.Jay Pulliam
Apple Venus Volume I, iCast, 1999
After an incredible seven-year absence from recording, XTC returned with an orchestra in tow. The intervening years found the band embroiled in legal problems and when they finally emerged to embark on this new work, they were reduced to a duo. Guitarist Dave Gregory departed, leaving just founders and songwriters Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding. The orchestral settings which became the identity of this first volume create vast and often theatrical settings for the songs, which don't stray far from what one would expect from XTC (that is, when they choose not to rock).
"River of Orchids" opens the album and announces their intentions as the arrangement slowly comes into view. Setting aside most worldly concerns for affairs of the heart, the album has a thematic unity that gives the whole thing the feel of a song cycle. Contributing only two songs to Partridge's nine, Moudling's "Frivolous Tonight" is a real gem, possessing a powerful beauty wrapped in hypnotic melancholia.
All original work is acknowledged as being the copyright of the originator.
