It's been raining here on and off all day today (California's rainy season is usually over long before May), so I've been listening to XTC's Skylarking, which is one of my de-facto "rainy day" albums. Some people consider that to be a summer album, but it's always been my rainy day album, since the album has a few "rain" songs ("Ballet For A Rainy Day" and "1000 Umbrellas"), and a bunch of others that reference seasonal changes of some kind or other.
Anyway, I decided today that May will be XTC month here in Hot Roxland. With the recent Dukes of Stratosphear reissues and Gil mentioning their last pre-exile album Nonsuch as one of the albums that changed his life, I've kind of had XTC on the mind recently.
I only became an XTC fan after I started college in the mid-80s, so I'm not as familiar with their catalog as I am with many bands. To give a clue, my first XTC purchase was Waxworks, my favorite XTC album is Skylarking and my second favorite is Apple Venus (vol.1). I know their later stuff much better than their early stuff (with the line between "early" and "late" set when I became a fan, which was around the time they stopped touring), and I'll probably choose to do their catalog alphabetically instead of chronologically to hide that fact.
Which would mean starting with Apple Venus, Volume 1, a record that I think is utterly brilliant, no matter what anyone else thinks.
5 comments:
In this case, I at least am certainly not "anyone else": I think it may well be their best album. It's certainly among the albums that I seem to know head to toe yet still move me intensely when I actually listen to them. I'm looking forward to your take on it.
Today, Wasp Star is my fave XTC album..but that's the way it goes...
Write on, brother!
I'm looking forward to reading these! Apple Venus is one of my favorites, too. In my opinion, they only really made a couple less-than-great albums.
Whereas for me, Wasp Star is one of them. There were a couple of demos I'd heard beforehand that weren't on the album - and Colin's heart seemed no longer in it. Still some good stuff to be sure - but I've always been disappointed in that one (esp. coming after AV1...).
Whereas for me, Wasp Star is one of them. There were a couple of demos I'd heard beforehand that weren't on the album - and Colin's heart seemed no longer in it. Still some good stuff to be sure - but I've always been disappointed in that one (esp. coming after AV1...).
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