1,000 Umbrellas Open to Spoil the View: XTC’s English Legacy

The early XTC sound, found on their first three albums, is manic, almost always up-tempo, definitively English. One can divide their career into four distinct periods, with the first three albums drenched in post-punk and new wave. 1980’s Black Sea signaled a sea change in the band’s sound and set a pattern that would continue through the ’80s and ’90s. Between Black Sea and The Big Express, XTC’s early adult period, if you will, the band worked with different producers for each record, but they still managed to create a recognizable sound that challenged listeners as much as any progressive band from the ’70s. They were making head music, inviting listeners to plug in the headphones, close their eyes, and float downstream on a journey of pure imagination. The Skylarking period between ’85 and ’92 gave way to the strike years and their last two albums, released in quick succession in 1999 and 2000.

The albums get progressively complex, the songwriting more esoteric. Both Partridge and Moulding as songwriters have a quintessentially English military fetish. Many songs from the early adult period have similar Cold War themes: Moulding’s “Generals and Majors,” Partridge’s “Sgt. Rock,” “Living Through Another Cuba,” “Beating Hearts,” and numerous other songs all reference war and armies. Partridge cultivated the persona of a precocious English public schoolboy in shorts, spectacles, and beanie cap, leaning over his scale model Waterloo. All those war songs may also have been a commentary on their touring lifestyles, similar to the way John Lennon sang “Help!” and “I’m a Loser” while at the height of Beatlemania. Touring is sometimes like going to war, living off the land.

XTC’s creative peak, 1985 to 1992, begins with their psychedelic experiment the Dukes of Stratosphear, who sounded like a lost Swinging London pop band. In 1986, XTC teamed with Todd Rundgren to produce perhaps their finest record, Skylarking. This record was extra special for me because Rundgren has always been one of my music gods. He is also an Anglophile, but Andy Partridge had a famous feud with Rundgren during the making of this record.

Todd is a taskmaster when he’s in his producer’s robes. He predetermined the length of Skylarking before any of the songs were recorded by splicing only enough master tape for about 42 minutes of music. Whatever songs the band wanted on the record had to fit that predetermined space. But I suspect the real reason behind the feud was that Partridge just didn’t like Rundgren’s definitely American sense of humor.

But Skylarking, with its rich harmonies and orchestral arrangements, is a timeless classic, perhaps the best album of the 1980s by anyone. And it set up a new style that XTC continued to explore for the rest of their recording career. The two albums that followed, 1989’s Oranges and Lemons and 1992’s Nonsuch, are both unique in their own ways, the former more guitar oriented—featuring the excellent Dave Gregory—and the latter more orchestral.

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