XTC Reel by Real: XTC: Nonsuch

	The Album The History The Record The Surround Sound Series The Songs Recording Info Reviews Discographical Info The Singles Art The Nonsvch Colouring Book “That which no equal has in art or fame Britons deservedly do Nonsvch name.” George Bush doesn't get it. David Duke thinks it contains communist codes. William Kennedy Smith just wants to know if it gets chicks hot. -- Nonsuch advertisement, SPY, August 1992.

GEFFEN RECORDS

Andy Partridge (lead vocals, guitar)
Colin Moulding (lead vocals, bass)
Dave Gregory (guitar, keyboards)

THE HISTORY

XTC's singer/guitarist Andy Partridge claims to have a brain "like an exotic dog which needs walking occasionally." The result of letting him out for his most recent run is the batch of 13 songs he's written for Nonsuch, the band's long-awaited tenth album (bassist/singer Colin Moulding contributes a further four tracks).

The latest XTC record is, Partridge acknowledges, very different to Oranges and Lemons, the band's 1989 triumph. "It's not as immediate, and that's the way we want it. Oranges and Lemons was right for the time, but it sounds cluttered to my ears now. Nonsuch is simpler sounding; our producer Gus Dudgeon forbade us to record any more than the bare necessities."

Although the production of Nonsuch (which means "without equal") is relatively straight forward, the album's lyrics are suffused with XTC's trademark mixture of the sardonic and the celebratory. "The outside world is dreadful and wonderful," explains Partridge. "When I cut it into bite-size chunks and make it personal, I'm usually rather happy with it. It'd be terrible if it was all one thing -- in life or on an album. That'd be like service a banquet of only green jello. We prefer a more balanced diet. We don't deny any emotion a song dictates."

One unfamiliar aspect to the new album was Partridge's method of composition; he penned many of Nonsuch's tracks on the keyboard, an instrument he calls "this grinning shark -- stroke its teeth and any minute it'll swallow you up." In fact, he's so unfamiliar with the device, he plays it "by drumming on it, two fingers here, two fingers there." Hence "Wrapped In Grey", which sounds "part Burt Bacharach, part Brian Wilson -- sort of Burt Wilson." The erstwhile Beach Boys leader cropped up again when Partridge wrote "Books Are Burning." "I worked out the Beach Boys' ‘I Get Around’ just to see how it was put together. And I thought, those are nice chords, shame to see them go to waste. We like to have mischievous fun, but we never steal knowingly."

Some of XTC's best ideas come from the remains of old records, and Partridge will go to great lengths to fillet out promising scraps. When the pop pathologist decided to examine the noisy middle passage in Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play" he discovered the warped piano figure which now drives "Omnibus".

"Often in the studio someone would say ‘Can we get the drums a little more like Little Eva's “Locomotion”? And let's have Neil Young playing the guitar ...’ These are just ideas you want to kidnap to build the perfectly proportioned Frankenstein's monster." (Each member of XTC has a home studio and guitarist Dave Gregory takes this love of old records to extremes in his painstakingly assembling miniature versions of rock epics. Notes Partridge, "He's made an extraordinarily faithful ‘Strawberry Fields’, an amazing ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’. Even ‘McArthur Park’. He's done Todd Rundgren better than Todd Rundgren.")

The stereo in the Partridge household plays the sounds of the Sixties -- the 1660's, that is. Madrigals and ballads played on lutes and recorders and other bits of low tech gear. Any brushes with the mainstream that XTC's had over the years have been purely coincidental. The band is still flourishing after a decade and a half because its members continue to challenge themselves, never settling for the predictable or resorting to the formulaic.

Forged in the unglamourous town of Swindon, Wiltshire (where the band is still based today), XTC burst onto the London scene in 1977, during the height of the punk explosion. The band, in its original line-up of Partridge, Moulding, Barry Andrews (keyboards) and Terry Chambers (drums), soon impressed both critics and audiences with its humor, sharp intelligence and vitality as well as its innovative rhythms and melodic twists.

The first XTC albums, White Music and Go 2, were released in 1977, bring the group cult status in American, where the records were only available as imports. The next year Barry Andrews left, replaced by Swindon guitarist/keyboardist Dave Gregory, and XTC released its breakthrough album, Drums and Wires. The record included the band's foundation for success in the U.S. with an official American release. Sure enough, XTC's next album, Black Sea, a landmark in the band's songwriting development, entered the American Top 50 in 1980.

Major changes were, however, in the offing. Following 1982's English Settlement double set -- which included the British hit "Senses Working Overtime" -- five years of gruelling touring came to an abrupt halt. While onstage in Paris, Partridge collapsed from exhaustion. Shortly afterwards, XTC stopped touring for good from a combination of frustration with reproducing the band's music live and Andy's mild case of stage fright, adding yet another chapter to the band's growing legend.

With the departure of Terry Chambers, the three-piece XTC signed an American deal with Geffen Records. The fruit of this union was the album Mummer (1983), an acoustic-flavored outing which signalled a new maturity for the band. Geffen then re-issued the compilation Waxworks: Some Singles 1977-1982 and the group's entire catalog to date. Later in 1984 came the new studio album The Big Express, revealing a harder, bluesier side to XTC.

The following year saw the debut of XTC's psychedelic alter egos the Dukes Of Stratosphear, with the U.K.-only release 25 O'Clock. The Dukes' retro cool assault was reprised with the 1987 Geffen album Psonic Psunspot which included the alternative hit "Vanishing Girl" (The two critically-acclaimed albums are combined on Geffen Records' Chips From The Chocolate Fireball anthology). Although there will be no further Dukes records, rumors persist that Sir John Johns and company will be reincarnated as a bubblegum outfit.

Between the Dukes Of Stratosphear's warped homages came 1986's glorious Skylarking and the irony of an XTC hit that was initially a non-album B-side. The controversial "Dear God." Both the single and the album set the stage for Oranges and Lemons, America's #1 alternative in 1989.

While working on Nonsuch, XTC cleaned out the vaults. Last year, Geffen re-issued several of the band's albums for the first time on CD, including additional tracks not on the original releases. The band also served up Rag & Bone Buffet, a compilation of tracks never before released in the U.S. or on CD. Today, all of the band's 12 albums -- the last six originally released by Geffen in the U.S. -- all but Waxworks have been released or re-issued by the label on CD (look for Waxworks to be released on CD mid-summer).

Though XTC has enjoyed a consistently successful career, the group has always shunned the conventional trappings of rock n' roll stardom, preferring instead more traditional pleasures, from family and children to loitering around Swindon's second-hand bookshops. "We're not everybody's idea of rock stars," Colin Moulding gladly concedes, "so some people see us as oddballs. Even the kids in our town are bewildered when they see me walking the dog after watching us on TV in a video. But we cut our own furrow. That is just the way we are."

XTC has always been one of the most distinctively English groups in the pop arena, and nowhere is that clearer than on Moulding's "Bungalow", a three minute paean to a disregarded corner of English life. "We tried to evoke this aching desire to own a bungalow by the sea," says Andy Partridge, "and imagined the song set in an out-of-season seaside resort. In the studio it helps people to get into a pictorial state of mind if you give them a set to play in. You might say ‘can you play it like you're on the edge of a chasm?’ Or ‘like you're cycling round Belgium?’ You have to give people a role to play in the carnival. Then they can convert your wishes into musical forms."

Since becoming a non-touring trio, XTC employs a different drummer for each album. Chosen to fill the stool on Nonsuch was Dave Mattacks of the legendary English folk band Fairport Convention. Mattacks managed to convert all of the band's wishes into drum patterns pretty swiftly -- with the exception of the track "Omnibus", on which Partridge had set a particularly exotic scene. "I wanted it to have a slightly Egyptian feel, but we had trouble getting the kind of shish kebab bouyancy I wanted. Eventually he drummed brilliantly on the track, as he did on the other sixteen. A ludicrously good drummer. He's probably drumming on half of your record collection and you don't even know it."

All this takes place under what Partridge calls "my own benevolent dictatorship. In the studio I become a cross between Walt Disney and Benito Mussolini." It must have been the Disney side which caused him to write "Holly Up On Poppy", a song about his daughter and her rocking horse. "I know writing about your children is well into the tacky sphere. When McCartney does that sort of thing I could murder him with a rusty Black and Decker. But I've fallen into the same abyss, apparently. I hope I don't come out too covered in treacle. Some people will see the track as candy floss hell, others will see it as natural."

Nonsuch was helmed by veteran producer Gus Dudgeon after a year's delay, during which numerous other top-ranked names were connected with the project. Former XTC producers Hugh Padgham and Steve Lillywhite were set to join forces (they even agreed to halve their fees), but Lillywhite's scheduling problems prevented the reunion. Former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones proved too expensive, as did stellar U.S. knobman Tom Lord Alge. Even Bill Bottrell, engineer on Michael Jackson's Dangerous, was ready to ship his vintage valve equipment to England, but the deal fell through.

"It's been a long and difficult birth. An elephantine gestation." But it's been worth the wait, says Partridge, adding, "It sounds corny but on a scale of proudness, this album's a 10. It has some of the very best songs we've ever done."

Although Nonsuch represents yet another confident stage in the continued growth of XTC, don't think for a second that the band suddenly craved the limelight. "We don't want to be praised and idolized," insists Andy Partridge. "We want our songs to be well-regarded. Love our songs, don't love us."

THE RECORD

XTC's songwriters, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding, recently talked about the tracks on Nonsuch (Geffen Records), the band's 12th album. Produced by Gus Dudgeon, Nonsuch, was recorded from July to October 1991 in Oxfordshire, England. The first single is "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead."

"The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead": "He's every hero, every politician, every religious leader who's far too good to be true and by telling the truth becomes a martyr. Is Peter Pumpkinhead Jesus or JFK or Buddha? Actually the name's from a jack-o-lantern I carved. After Halloween, I stuck it on a fence post in my garden and every day I'd go past it on my way to my composing shed. And every day it would decay a bit more. I felt so sorry for it, I thought I'd make it a hero in a song." (Andy)

"My Bird Performs": "A happy-with-my-lot song." (Colin) "The best melody that Paul Simon never wrote." (Andy)

"Dear Madam Barnum": "I initially wrote this for a film set in 1965. It has a folk rock chug that's east of Merseybeat and south of the Hollies. But when I delivered the song they had no money, so I kept it instead." (Andy)

"Humble Daisy": "A paean to the person and the weed. There's a wonderful field where I walk my dog and overnight these big daisies came up. So the song's in praise of that glorious weed. As for some of the words, I have no idea what they mean - but they're pictorially gorgeous." (Andy)

"The Smartest Monkeys": "A piece of sarcasm and an obvious sentiment -- the human race can send a man to the moon but it's not able to put food in stomachs and roofs over heads." (Colin)

"The Disappointed": "I fancied writing something that was up musically and dejected lyrically at the same time. It's about people who've been neglected in affairs of the heart, and they band together to form an organisation of the disappointed. Then they all congregate round this guy's house and declare him their king. It's in memory of morose teenage incapacity with the opposite sex." (Andy)

"Holly Up On Poppy": "My daughter calls her rocking horse Poppy. Originally the song was titled ‘Holly High on Poppy’ but people thought it was about drugs. Even now someone's said it's about dying of cancer and taking drugs to ease the pain. But it's really about my daughter and her rocking horse." (Andy)

"Crocodile": "The most basic thing on the album -- a noisy pop song about jealousy. It's about putting a shape to an emotion that we've all felt, the shape of a crocodile. The beast comes to live with you, and then devours you if you're not careful." (Andy)

"Rook": "I was frozen with writers block. Then suddenly this song came out. I was really frightened. I mean, I couldn't even finish the demo because I was in tears. It felt like seeing yourself in a mirror and recognising your own mortality. Maybe it's something in the chord changes. I don't understand the lyrics, which is rather exciting." (Andy)

"Omnibus": "In praise of women. They're wondrous. This belongs in a 50's musical with Anthony Newley singing it, hanging off the back of some trolleybus." (Andy)

"That Wave": "Falling in love. When I was a kid I remember dashing into the sea with these massive breakers and was struck unconscious. To this day I'm very frightened of the sea. Love too is frightening -- and marvelous." (Andy)

"Then She Appeared": "A slice of whimsy and a chance to mention Fox Talbot. You don't hear many pop songs invoke the name of one of the founders of photography." (Andy)

"War Dance": "The words were originally prompted by the Falklands War in 1982. But it was too much on one piece of history. Then along came the Persian Gulf War and I put the revised lyrics to a new piece of music. It was time to bring war out of the closet again." (Colin)

"Wrapped In Grey": "Life doesn't have to be grey and soulless. If you tap into your own emotions, you can experience all the colors." (Andy)

"The Ugly Underneath": "You must be prepared to take off the mask. You must see the ugly to be beautiful. The sugar sweet can become ugly too, like in marriage or politics. Hopefully we captured the psychotic nature of the song." (Andy)

"Bungalow": "Very seaside-y and cheesy organ, like something a cruddy trio in holiday camp might play." (Colin) "This is one of my favorite things Colin's written." (Andy)

"Books Are Burning": "I'm intensely proud of this song. I love books, they're sacred objects, and anyone who destroys them is scum. Usually it's frightened regimes, their way of saying we're in control. But what they stand for doesn't have a hope in hell. To destroy thoughts, dreams, and an attempt to communicate is a crime." (Andy)

0492

[Thanks to Egidio Sabbadini]

Lyrics, Charts and More

1. The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
2. My Bird Performs
3. Dear Madam Barnum
4. Humble Daisy
5. The Smartest Monkeys
6. The Disappointed
7. Holly Up On Poppy
8. Crocodile
9. Rook
10. Omnibus
11. That Wave
12. Then She Appeared
13. War Dance
14. Wrapped In Grey
15. The Ugly Underneath
16. Bungalow
17. Books Are Burning

The 2013 CD/Blu-ray and CD/DVD-A reissues include the following bonus tracks:

1. Didn't Hurt A Bit
2. Always Winter But Never Christmas (demo)
3. Goosey Goosey (demo)
4. Difficult Age (demo)
5. It's Snowing Angels (demo)
6. Rip Van Ruben (demo)
7. Wonder Annual (demo)
8. Down a Peg (work tape)
9. Car Out of Control (work tape)
10. Where Did the Ordinary People Go? (work tape)

Recording Information

Produced by Gus Dudgeon.
Engineered by Barry Hammond.
Mixed by Nick Davis, assisted by Simon "Lord Brewer" Dawson.
Digitally recorded at Chipping Norton Studios, Oxfordshire, England, July-October 1991 using the Mitsubishi system.
Mixed at Rockfield Studios, Monmouth, South Wales, November-December 1991.
String and brass arrangements by David Gregory.
Originally released on 24 March 1992 in the U.K.

2001 stereo re-master by Ian Cooper at Metropolis Mastering.

New stereo edition mixed and produced by Steven Wilson from the original multi-track tapes, flat master transfer.
5.1 Surround Sound and 2013 HD stereo editions mixed and produced by Steven Wilson from the original multi-track tapes.
Released on 4 November 2013 in the U.K.

Andy Partridge - Lead & backing vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, tambourine, percussion, bell tree, circus band, keyboard programming, synthsizers, shaker, harmonica, cheers
Colin Moulding - Lead & backing vocals, bass guitar, electric & acoustic guitars
Dave Gregory - Synthesizers, electric & acoustic guitars, e-bow guitars, backing vocals, hammond organ, piano, cheers, church bell, acme thunderer, circus band
with
Dave Mattacks - Drums, samples, percussion, tambourine, shaker
Florence Lovegrove - Viola
Gina Griffin - Violin
Gus Dudgeon - Percussion, ringmaster, tambourine, chorus, cheers
Guy Barker - Flugelhorns & trumpets
Neville Farmer - chorus
Rose Hull - Cello
Stuart Gordon - Violin

Reached No. 97 on the Billboard album chart in the U.S.A. on 16 May 1992.
Reached No. 1 on the Rolling Stone College album chart.
Reached No. 79 in the Dutch album chart on 16 May 1992.
Reached No. 5 in the OOR “Moordlijst” on 30 May 1992.
Reached No. 35 in “The Georgia Straight Top 50” (Vancouver, BC) on 9 July 1992.

Nonsuch was nominated for “Best Alternative Music Album” in the 35th Grammy^® Awards, 1992 (awarded February 24, 1993). It did not win.

Andy: “I love chords that have triangular, star-shaped points to them. I'm not keen on the round ones that just slip down porridge-like.”

Some working titles for this album included Balloon, Milk, The Last Balloon Ride Home, and Wonder Annual.

The Little Express: “Adrift in our beds we awaken with the sound of Rooks, Monkeys, Birds, Buses and Waves populating our unconscious. . . We are flying down to the bottom of the sea and a thousand Cheshire cats are grinning inside.”

Chris Twomey: “. . . ‘Nonsuch’ - meaning, appropriately enough, ‘unrivalled’ - the trials and tribulations of the previous two and a half years had, at least, resulted in what all those close to [XTC] considered an outstanding record. Possibly their most accomplished yet. . .”

Singles

The Diſappointed	NAC Sampler (Nonsvch Adult Contemporary) (U.S.A. promo sampler)	This Is Not The New Album (U.S.A. promo sampler)
Radios In Motion ... A History of XTC (U.S.A. promo sampler)	Gribouillage (France demos EP)	The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
Demo Tracks (Japan demos EP)	Dear Madam Barnum (U.S.A. promo only)	Wrapped in Grey (withdrawn)

Art

cover of the Nonsuch USA CD	cover of Nonsvch UK CD	cover of the 2001 Caroline USA Nonsuch CD
the cover of the UK Nonsuch CD jewel box	the back cover of the Virgin UK Nonsuch LP	the back insert of the Virgin UK Nonsuch CD
Geffen USA cassette of Nonsuch	the J-card of the Geffen USA Nonsuch cassette	Geffen USA Nonsuch longbox
Andy Partridge from Nonsvch	Colin Moulding from Nonsvch	Dave Gregory from Nonsvch
Nonsvch vignette from Nonsvch	Nonsvch magazine advertisement	ad from Alternative Press 1992
full page magazine advert for Nonsvch	trade advertisement for Nonsvch	trade advertisement for Nonsvch
very large store window display poster for Nonsvch	original outfit worn by Andy Partridge for the Nonsvch photo sessions	a promotional cloth item from Nonsvch
Nonsuch Playing Card	“Ye Olde Card Game”, promotional item for Nonsvch, 1992	“Ye Olde Card Game”, promotional item for Nonsvch, 1992
US Nonsvch CD advert insert part 1	US Nonsvch CD advert insert part 2	Japanese Nonsvch promotional box set
Japanese Nonsvch promotional box set and contents	backside of the Japanese Nonsvch promotional box	a Nonsvch T-shirt
a long-sleeve Nonsvch T-shirt	Nonsvch promotional items and more	Circa 1992 Nonsuch Tshirt. Large. Never been worn nor washed.
the cover of A Short History of Ewell and Nonsuch, by Cloudesley S Willis	a Nonsvch T-shirt from the 1992 XTC Music & Friends convention	backside of the Nonsvch T-shirt from the 1992 XTC Music & Friends convention
Nishimatu Nisei, 08/96	back cover of This is Not the New Album

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