XTC, Wasp Star

Apple Venus, Volume I, the album XTC released early last year, was adored by critics but ignored by the public, and no wonder; harmonically rich and ornately arranged with a careful pallette of strings and winds, its songs celebrated, without irony, love and nature and getting happily old, and how many young American consumers shell out for something like that? Radio stations had little use for the album either; sure, none of its string-heavy songs really screamed "single," but then, if listeners can make a monster hit out of something as flaccid and boring as "Bittersweet Symphony," is it so hard to imagine the same happening for "Easter Theatre" or "Greenman"?

Andy Partridge isn't taking any chances this time around. The second volume of Apple Venus has been released in disguise as Wasp Star, and Partridge is frank in admitting that the bright, shiny (if slightly cumbersome) nom de guerre is meant to send a clear signal to record buyers and radio programmers that this new record, though intended from the beginning as a companion to its predecesor, nevertheless sounds nothing like Apple Venus, Volume 1. Confused? Welcome to the world of XTC, where nothing ever seems to happen simply.

Well, nothing except Wasp Star, maybe. This is the simplest, most unforced record XTC has ever made--the record Virgin Records wanted from them but never got. Partridge made a conscious decision, back in '95 or thereabouts, to set aside his sequencer and library of samples and return XTC to its roots as a plugged-in guitar band. Wasp Star's nine Partridge compositions are wrapped in an identical gauze of thick, fuzzy guitars; there are the occasional hints of trumpets or strings, but for the most part this is garage XTC, straightforward and loud. If the band doesn't score at least a minor hit off this one, Partridge and bandmate Colin Moulding should resign themselves to spending their reclining years in a Swindon retirement home. "Mr. Partridge? Time for your meds!" "Zzzzz..."

As for which Wasp Star track could prove to be The Big One, there are several contenders. "Playground" recounts the terrors of the schoolyard with the perfect recall of the former victim, and does it alongside what could turn out to be the summer's catchiest guitar riff. "Stupidly Happy" lopes along with a daffy amiability worthy of its name; "I'm the Man Who Murdered Love" has a chorus that lodges in your head the second you hear it, never to be pried loose; and "We're All Light" is a masterpiece--a snappy programmed drumbeat and strange, noodly guitars accompany a desperate would-be hipster trying to get in a woman's underwear: "So you won't mind if I kiss you now/Before indecision can bite/Don't you know in this new dark age/We're all light." Stephen Hawking couldn't have said it better.

Those are just the most obviously catchy numbers. I would be remiss if I didn't mention "My Brown Guitar," a typically Partridgean double-entendre set to a thumping beat, and plastered all over with thick, Beatlesque harmonies. "The Wheel and the Maypole," too, is a classic, a perfect splicing of two of Partridge's most persistent obsessions, the decay of all life and relationships that go horribly wrong; it would not be too much to venture that, with this song, he's finally said just about all that can be said on the subject. (After all, once you've written "Planets fall apart/just to feed the stars and stuff their larders" in a song, where else is there to go?)

Moulding's numbers are of a different sort: still tuneful and pleasant to the ear, but without Partridge's confidence or theatrical flair. Moulding's songs insinuate themselves on your ear and on your subconscious, so that judging them even after a month of listenings is perilous. At this stage, "In Another Life" and "Standing In For Joe" are a little too similar musically, though the former is a sly and moving appraisal of middle age and how you get there that should age nicely. "Boarded Up" is a peculiar beast--a couple of acoustic guitars, the sound of clomping feet, and Moulding's increasingly hoarse voice are all there is to this sad little song about the further decline of Swindon, XTC's home town and continued place of residence. (Has any rotting metropolis been so well documented as has Swindon? And has any town, rotting or otherwise, given less of a shit about producing a band so famous and talented?)

As tuneful as Wasp Star is, it must be said that by XTC's standards it's pretty light fare. There are no outright clunkers--except maybe Partridge's "Wounded Horse," a spoof country song that gets its point across very quickly but refuses to leave--and very little sense of risk. Maybe Partridge and Moulding simply make it look too easy; these songs certainly must have taken longer to compose and craft than is apparent on listening to these cheerful, bouyant performances.

Were I to introduce a top-40 radio devotee to XTC, this would be the album I'd choose; any young person who can't find at least one song to like from this record isn't worth the bother. Were I faced with persuading a more discriminating listener, I might go for the pastoral song-cycle of Skylarking, the whirling kaleidoscope of Oranges and Lemons, or the pop mastery of Nonsuch or Apple Venus, Volume 1. I would be too afraid of the reaction were I to attempt it with Wasp Star:

"So what'd you think of that album I loaned you? The XTC?"

"Oh, with that 'Man Who Murdered Love' song?" A shrug. "It was pretty good."