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Genere: Rock

Durata:

Dischi: 1

Produttore:

Trama:

Genere: Rock

Durata:

Dischi: 1

Produttore:

Trama: Even hard-core fans remain slightly ambivalent about 1984's The Big Express, the least organic and most dogmatic of all XTC albums and ideally the last place any prospective XTC purchaser should start building their collection. Instead, hesitant newcomers to the band's fine body of work are best off seeking the Fossil Fuel singles collection, which happens to contain the best tracks The Big Express has to offer, namely the reggae-grooved, Police-inspired nuclear-war lament "This World Over" and the bubblegum-pop sea shanty "All You Pretty Girls," which really does sound like "What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor" as performed by the entire cast of The King and I. For the more persistent and inquisitive, The Big Express offers some challenging obstacles in the shape of the Captain Beefheart-goes-hoedown twitchiness of "Shake Your Donkey Up" or the parochial Britpop prototype "Everyday Story of Smalltown," which evokes Ray Davies in its lyrical observations of dawn milk rounds and laborers commuting to the Swindon railworks on bicycles. Andy Partridge, particularly, has always enjoyed a love/hate relationship with his hometown. And like Swindon's industrial legacy, The Big Express is rather morose. Sure enough, more splendid creative times were just around the bend for XTC. --Kevin Maidment

Genere: Rock

Durata:

Dischi: 1

Produttore:

Trama: Oranges and Lemons, from 1989, is a fantastic record, a lucid, technicolor sprawl of modernized Beatleisms and airbrushed psych-pop confectionary. Commercially, it was such a shame Tears for Fears had exactly the same idea at exactly the same time. Appropriately, given its title, several of the songs on Oranges and Lemons deal with Andy Partridge's newly acquired parental status (the jazzy "Pink Thing" is a cunning double-entendre about fatherly pride and his penis) as well as wryly address the wider failings of the world into which our children are born. Yes, like some sherberty, fructose-flavored lozenge, Oranges and Lemons is both bitter and sweet. But unquestionably excellent, as witnessed by the Byrds-like village-idiot love song "Mayor of Simpleton" and other highlights like "King for a Day" and "Poor Skeleton Steps Out." The Eastern mystique, serpentine guitars, and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" style chorus of "Garden of Earthly Delights" is conceivably what John, Paul, George, and Ringo would have sounded like if they'd hung around a little longer with the Maharishi. As for the dreamy, green-field tourist brochure panoramas of "Chalkhills and Children," think Brian Wilson drifting over the English countryside in a hang glider. --Kevin Maidment