Skylarking

If I had to choose just one favorite XTC album, it would almost definitely be Skylarking, because that's the one album that they got 100% right. Much was made at the time, and since, about the friction between Andy Partridge and producer Todd Rundgren (one bunker, two fuhrers), but they combined to make a fabulous record. It's one of those albums I always play from start to finish, and have kept in regular rotation for 22+ years.

"Start to finish" in this case being the original 1986 running order (restored in the 2001 reissue) with "Mermaid Smiled" at track #11 and "Dear God" at the end as a pseudo bonus track. After "Dear God" started getting airplay as the b-side of "Grass", it was added to the album replacing "Mermaid Smiled". The problem was that the album was sequenced so each song segued into the next, so "Mermaid Smiled" fit perfectly after "Another Satellite", but "Dear God" sounded like another song spliced in the middle. And Skylarking isn't a very long album by XTC standards (just over 45 minutes) so I never understood the need to remove a song. Maybe so it would fit on a single LP (or one side of a 90 minute tape).

Anyway, before I had the reissued CD, I made a CDR of Skylarking with "Mermaid Smiled" at track #11 and "Dear God" put at the end with "Extrovert" and the other b-sides from "The Meeting Place" 12". I think "Dear God" really does fit on Skylarking, just at the end after "Sacrificial Bonfire".



For some reason, I always here this fading into "In God's Country" by U2 or "Wasteland" by the Mission UK ("I still believe in God..but God no longer believes in me").