XTC Resurfaces With First Album in Six Years - Billboard, February 1999
BY DYLAN SIEGLER

NEW YORK -- XTC front man Andy Partridge is an expert at making the best of negative situations.

"In the past six years," he says, "I got divorced; I was prevented from legally doing my art; an infection burst my eardrum; I felt betrayed, rejected, and useless. And I found all of it vastly inspirational."

The Swindon, England, alternative pop/rock band turned its heartache into a new album, "Apple Venus Volume 1," due March 16 from TVT Records through the band's imprint, Idea Records. XTC went on strike against its contract with Virgin (and Geffen in the U.S.) after recording the 1992 album "Nonsuch." A book about the band will be released by Hyperion in March.

"The older and more ornery we got about the music we wanted to do, the more entrenched we got in the craftsmanship side of it," explains Partridge. "It was like this: We wanted to make our chair the best chair that ever was, and our former label wanted us to knock out cheap plastic chairs and 'Have you got a few tables and a settee as well?' " he says.

Partridge, bandmate Colin Moulding, and now ex-bandmate Dave Gregory (who left the band during the recording of "Apple Venus Volume 1") spent the years stockpiling songs. "That's what kept us going," says Moulding. "The thought that one day we would record them."

Adds Partridge, "The buildup to making this new album was more musically intense than the buildup to making our very first album. Storing stuff up for this record was like, 'My God, is anyone ever going to hear this?' "

The answer, of course, is yes. "Apple Venus Volume 1" is not only the band's first new album in six years, but also its debut for TVT and its first departure from the "triumvirate of guitar, bass, and drums that makes up 99% of pop music," says Partridge.

"This album blows that open -- it says, 'I'm going to have the spine of the song be an orchestra, or an acoustic guitar, or a piano, and we'll hang the ribs and the lungs and stuff on that.' "

The recording -- which Partridge dubs "orchustic" -- was born of his romance with the orchestral sounds on his sampler and grew into the album's 11 radically divergent tracks. The songs flirt with syncopated horns, vocal harmonies, and strings alternately lush, plucky, and discordant. Along with accessible acoustic strumming, the album dwells within the context of the band's lyrical wit and hummable pop aesthetic.

Formed in 1975, XTC is perhaps best known for the 1989 single "Mayor Of Simpleton," which reached No. 72 on The Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on Modern Rock Tracks. XTC was a direct predecessor of modern rock and alterna-pop as it exists today. Despite the new album's orchestral slant, the personality and humor of Partridge and Moulding surface high in the mix, which is vital for a group whose cult following is legendary.

TVT began addressing XTC's loyal fan base in 1998 with a boxed set of BBC archival material from the band, "Transistor Blast," and will reach that base through E-mail and direct mail about the Haydn Bendell-produced "Apple Venus Volume 1."

The band, which the label says has been "extremely hands-on" with the new album, plans to release a second album later in 1999, returning to traditional rock instrumentation.

The label will service the disc's first single, "I'd Like That," to triple-A and modern rock stations on Feb. 16. "These formats are looking for career artists more than just a single deep," says Gottlieb.

While Partridge and the band gave up touring in 1983 ("I don't like it. I don't feel the need to do it," he says. "I got that out of my system in my 20s"), the band will be making interview appearances at radio stations around the country, as well as signing copies of the Hyperion book "XTC: Song Stories" at bookstores.

"This orchestral stuff [on this album] is not filler -- I'm more proud of this than anything I've done, and even if I wasn't us, I'd like it," says Partridge. "They say that music is made out of extreme misery or extreme joy, and I think over the last five years I've done big dollops of both. But I wouldn't change a thing, because now I've got all these songs, and they're the best batch yet."

All original work is acknowledged as being the copyright of the originator.