BY DYLAN SIEGLER, February 8, 1999
XTC Resurfaces With First Album in Six Years
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's VP of marketing, Paul Burgess, says the label 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. "Our
campaign will reignite the fan base, expand it, and, most importantly, cement
the idea that XTC is still valid and important and still making great music,"
says Burgess.
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. Burgess and label president Steve Gottlieb say TVT is
not daunted by the act's unconventional plans.
"For all the virtue of doing things by rote," says Gottlieb, "it's destined
to fail if you do things the way they've been done before. XTC will not allow
the system to put them in a box."
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.
"There's an XTC fan base that's been waiting a long time for this album, and
there's a great possibility that they'll build on new fans," says Patty Martin,
music director at triple-A WXRT Chicago. "The first single and two other album
tracks I can think of are great, radio-friendly pop songs that could even work
at a gutsy AC station."
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.
"For some bands, the lack of touring might be a problem," says Bob Bell,
new-release buyer at the 220-store, Torrance, Calif.-based Wherehouse
Entertainment. "But XTC is a band that's always played by their own rules, so
they can get away with it."
He adds that XTC's catalog is "very much alive" and that fans' anticipation
for the album should drive sales initially. "I don't think the orchestral
concept behind this record will be any problem for them at retail," says
Bell.
"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."
© 1999 Billboard and BPI Communications Inc. All rights
reserved.
[Thanks to Neil Oliver and Wes Hanks]
