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Apple Venus Volume 2 is out now! |
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(Go see what TVT records have to say...)
Read the press release -:- Andy's latest interview at VH1 -:- Cooking Vinyl's great spread
Named 'Wasp Star' after the Mayan name for Venus - the album features several tracks known to demo collectors over the last few years. The track listing is:
Playground
Stupidly Happy
In Another Life*
My Brown Guitar
Boarded Up*
I'm The Man Whoi Murdered Love
We're All Light
Standing In For Joe*
Wounded Horse
You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful
Church Of Women
The Wheel And The Maypole
All tracks by A Partridge except * by Colin Moulding.
Well, it's not quite the glorious "WTF?" that Volume One was, but it certainly has its moments. XTC without Mr Gregory has a quite different flavour when it comes to the reguitarisation of the music- there was a sense on the demo tracks that Andy was preempting Dave's style when suggesting the various guitar licks and fills, but on these final takes this has all disappeared. "I'm The Man Who Murdered Love", which always sounded very weak as a demo to me, lives up to Andy's faith in it, displaying a spledid great vigour and glee, while Colin's "Boarded Up" is as exasperating as "The Smartest Monkeys", musically satisfying, but lyrically awkward.
This album will be accompanying me on many a summery cycle ride...
My thanks go to Theo Durnford for supplying the following review...
The Independent, 19th May.
In the seven-year hiatus occasioned by their self-imposed industrial action following 1992's splendid Nonsuch, XTC's Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding stockpiled enough material for four albums, eventually opting to release two albums showcasing discrete sides of their work. The first of these, last year's widely acclaimed Apple Venus, was a touch too rococo for my taste, but Wasp Star represents a glorious affirmation of the core XTC values - winning melodies, velcro hooks, articulate lyrics, soaring harmonies and meticulously-detailed arrangements. The infectious humour has been leavened somewhat by personal travails, with Partridge in particular musing about the nature of being and attraction, the impermanence of love, the inscrutability of women and the cyclical nature of life; but this is no bad thing, actively adding to the album's depth. Moulding's songs are less personal but equally well-crafted, especially the bluesy elegy for a shutdown venue "Boarded Up", with its lovely touches of wan harmonium. Like Ween, XTC have an embarrassment of stylistic riches at their disposal, employed here with a restraint and sureness of touch that was sometimes lacking on Apple Venus. It's a superb work which, in any other week, would surely be album of the week.
