Rise Of The Wasp Star, Launch eZine, 2000
By Mac Randall

When LAUNCH last spoke to XTC 's principal singer, songwriter, and guitarist Andy Partridge, it was the end of 1998 and he had just completed work on the group's first album in seven years, Apple Venus Volume One , a stunning piece of orchestral/ acoustic pop. Originally, Partridge and fellow singer-songwriter/ bassist Colin Moulding had planned to release Apple Venus as a double-set, with the orchestral material on one disc and somewhat more traditionally arranged rock band-type numbers on the other, but for various reasons those plans changed, and the set was split into two separate albums, with Volume Two to be released a year after Volume One. Which brought up an obvious question: What could we expect the new electric material to sound like? "A sweeter Black Sea," Andy responded, referring to the band's classic 1980 release, which featured action-packed selections like "Generals And Majors" and "Respectable Street." Of course, it was all well and good for Partridge to say this, but hard to believe that 20 years on, he could live up to many an XTC fan's dreams and actually bring back intact the sound and spirit of what, for lots of listeners, remains their greatest era.

Now over a year has gone by, and Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume Two) is finally upon us, so what's the verdict? Well, surprise, surprise, this isn't XTC circa 1980. Anger isn't boiling out of the grooves, the melodies rarely stray into dissonance, the lyrics talk less about politics and society than about relationships between men and women (and fairly grown-up relationships at that), and Andy is singing, not howling or barking. All that said, however, it's hard not to feel that in many ways Partridge's description was right on target. With its joyously clanging electric and acoustic guitars, swooping bass lines and primal clattering drums, this is sonically more like the XTC of Black Sea and English Settlement than anything they've recorded in the two decades since. "I do think there's a massive continuity between the early albums and this album," Partridge says on the phone from his home in Swindon, England. "I don't have any grand theories about that, but you can hear it."

The first album to be recorded in the new XTC studios, located in Moulding's garage, Wasp Star (the title is derived from the ancient Aztec name for the planet Venus) again utilizes the talents of Apple Venus producer/ keyboardist Nick Davis and, on four songs, drummer Prairie Prince; veteran sessioneer Chuck Sabo mans the skins for the rest of the album. Listening to Wasp Star and its predecessor back to back, it's fairly obvious that they were designed to be heard as one piece ("Imagine you were struggling with the cellophane on the second disc for a year," Andy helpfully advises). Several tracks on the two records mirror each other uncannily. This sense of yin and yang is particularly clear in the case of the respective closing tunes. "The Last Balloon," which ends Apple Venus, is a slow, musically morose admission that our world is a mess and can only be saved if the children of tomorrow leave their parents and the washed-up beliefs they cling to behind. "The Wheel And The Maypole," the dazzling British folk-inflected medley that ends Wasp Star, is even less optimistic--its key line is "Everything decays," the kind of sentiment you'd expect more from Trent Reznor than Andy Partridge--and yet the racing tempo and infectious melody lend this pointed acceptance of sickness and death an odd sense of hope, even jubilation. "Those songs are opposite sides of the same coin," their composer admits. "One is couched in undistilled misery, but its sentiment is one of hope for kids and them what is about to inherit the sh-t we just dumped. The other's couched in fizzy wine, but the sentiment is there's going to be death and decay and stuff coming undone, and you just have to embrace it."

One of the new album's most immediately winning tracks, "Stupidly Happy," could be called, in purely musical terms, the rock version of Apple Venus Vol. 1's "River Of Orchids": a simple repetitive base (in this case, a Stonesy guitar blast) is the platform for several different melodic lines, introduced in separate places during the song and then brought together at the end. "That is something of a signature," Partridge admits of this very distinctive arrangement style. "It's just something that I like the sound of, and I enjoy writing music that works that way." The various instruments and vocals that are gradually added as "Stupidly Happy" winds towards its conclusion were not recorded straight through and punched in during the mix but recorded just as you hear them. Andy, as he is wont to do, uses an analogy to describe the effect: that of a trumpeter walking down the street, joined at the corner by a tuba player, then greeted by a trombonist leaving a nearby shop, and going on that way until a full brass band is parading along the boulevard. One of the last rhythm guitar parts to be added features chords that were implied by the previous parts. "Once we were in the studio and listening closely to all the tracks, we could hear these harmonics hanging there," Partridge explains. "Even though the notes themselves weren't being played by any single instrument, they were being produced through the combination of instruments. So I figured why not go all the way and actually have a guitar play those implied notes, and that's what comes in at the end of the song."

As is usually the case with XTC albums, internal sequencing is a crucial element of Wasp Star, with tracks segueing into one another or placed together to form clever contrasts. Three songs in a row--Colin's "In Another Life," Andy's "My Brown Guitar," and Colin's "Boarded Up"--end similarly, with footsteps (or variations on that sound) gradually fading out. "Those were all the songs that didn't have traditional endings," Andy says. "They all break apart. But putting them in sequence like that, that breaking apart actually brings all three of them together in a strange way. Discovering stuff like that at the end of the recording process, it's sort of like you're finishing up cleaning a room by dusting its corners, and then you find that you don't need to dust the corners after all, that what's there is fine just as it is." Perhaps the oddest song out, stylistically speaking, on the new album is Moulding's tongue-in-cheek ode to infidelity, "Standing In For Joe." With its crisp backbeat and raspy synthesizer riff, it sounds like a loving nod to early-'80s top 40 radio, but it didn't start out that way. Colin originally wrote the song for a projected '60s bubblegum album XTC had cooked up in the early '90s--a sequel, if you will, to their earlier psychedelic incarnation as the Dukes Of Stratosphear, with XTC taking on the likeness of a fictional group similar to the Archies or 1910 Fruitgum Company --a concept that had left the folks at Virgin, the band's British label at the time, scratching their heads. "Joe" hadn't been in the running for Wasp Star, but as the sessions for the album began, Colin lobbied hard to record it. Andy agreed, as long as Colin changed a couple of notes in the verse melody, which were a little too close to Steely Dan's "Barrytown" for complete comfort. "Colin and I had several long arguments about that," Andy recalls, "principally because Colin didn't actually know the Steely Dan song so he didn't realize how close it was. He didn't think it was that much of a big deal. I said, 'Well, it's your song, matey, you're the one Donald Fagen 'll be suing, I'm just trying to do you a favor here.'"

The biggest Steely Dan fan in XTC used to be guitarist Dave Gregory--that is, before he left the group in 1998. Only one track on Wasp Star, "My Brown Guitar," originally featured Gregory's playing, and Partridge and Moulding ended up leaving his work off the final song after they received what Andy calls a "very snotty fax" from Dave on the subject of royalties. "It was fighting petulance with petulance," he now says. Though Colin does play rhythm guitar on his own songs, Partridge takes all the solos here--and very tastefully too, especially on the vaguely Brazilian-flavored "You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful" and the flighty pop anthem "Church Of Women" (whose dignified tempo and quasi-gospel chorus are strongly reminiscent of an earlier Partridge tune, "Books Are Burning," off 1992's Nonsuch "Normally I'd leave the tricky guitar parts to Dave," Andy says. "According to the union demarcation of the band, that was his job. So part of me was a little scared to do that on this album, but eventually I really enjoyed doing it, so by the end I almost felt like buffing my nails and saying, 'Wow, I did that solo, and that one too.' I got into it."

With Wasp Star complete, what's next for XTC? Partridge says he's currently planning a series of albums containing previously unreleased home demos covering at least the past decade; rarely heard tracks like "Dame Fortune," "Bumper Cars," and "Ship Trapped In The Ice," which have been the talk of rabid XTC fans for years, will be included. As for new material, there is none at the moment. The band's long strike against Virgin over a contractual dispute, which stretched on for five years, has had a lasting effect on Andy's creativity. "You're going to be amazed at this, but I haven't written a song since 1997. I've been so constipated. Apple Venus and Wasp Star were stuck in there, and until you get rid of that, you can't mentally go on and make any more music. But now that stuff is out of the way, I'm getting itchy to write again."

It is a near certainty that any new Partridge and Moulding songs in the foreseeable future will still be released under the XTC banner, even though, with the departure of Gregory, the band XTC has for all intents and purposes ceased to exist. "We're not a band anymore," Partridge admits. "When you think of a band, you think of four 18-year-old kids, and we're definitely not that. We're somewhere between a name brand, a coalition of songwriters, and a group of true amateur record makers--and I mean amateur as in someone who loves what he does. But whatever you call it, it will continue. It would be silly not to."

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