XTC began their career at the time of the “new wave” with more or less experimental ambitions (an “industrial” neurosis combined with punk nervousness), but over time they revealed themselves to be simple pop craftsmen, in the wake of one of the oldest traditions of the United Kingdom, which goes back at least to the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan and passes through the many Petula Clarks of the 1950s, Merseybeat, and glam rock. XTC’s overall body of work is undoubtedly imposing, like no other in this field. Album after album, XTC buried all the competition in the realm of British melodic song, from the Beatles to Elton John, eventually arriving at a kind of baroque of the three-minute song.

The problem, of course, is precisely that: songs built around a chorus and still bound to the three-minute format, as if decades of rock music had never existed. Time has thus also mercilessly exposed the limits of their art. If on the one hand XTC must be acknowledged as infallible entertainers, on the other it can be said that no one knows how to make people yawn with perfect choruses like XTC. From another perspective, then, XTC are not inventors of memorable melodies: they are buriers of memorable memories.

XTC (i.e., “ecstasy”) were formed in 1976, at the dawn of the punk era. Leading the group were singer-songwriters Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding.

The first singles were still tied to punk hysteria. Science Friction (1977) fused the stutter of the Who’s My Generation and the frenetic rhythm of punk rock with the vehemence of a boogie piano and the brashness of a vaudeville-style synthesizer.

White Music (Virgin, 1978) was their manifesto album, venting the angst of the era by disfiguring elementary melodies and cadences with hyper-kinetic nervousness and dissonances.
Standing out, however, were eccentric gags worthy of provincial theater, such as the clownish quadrille of Do What You Do (to the slapping rhythm of the wildest rural dances but with a small dissonant bacchanal) and the epileptic syncopations of electronics and drums on X Wires (almost a caricature of thrash), due to the impish Moulding, while Partridge holds forth in the Oriental-tinged rap-reggae of I'm Bugged, the surf nursery rhyme of Atom Age, and the supersonic boogie of Neon Shuffle. The real classics, however, are the other frenetic boogie Radios In Motion (with beat backing vocals and music-hall steps), the power-pop of Statue Of Liberty (with clapping, reggae gait and surf organ), and the beat with tribal rhythm of This Is Pop, stuffed with “yeah-yeahs.” The inclination to steal riffs and choruses from the 1960s finds a provisional apotheosis in Set Myself On Fire (by Moulding).

Once the pro-forma anger of the first anthems had cooled, the second album, Go 2 (Virgin, 1978), unwound a more refined sound, mixing psychedelia (Buzzcity Talking) and devolution (Mekkanik Dancing). The single Are You Receiving Me found the right balance in melodic hard rock.

The still shy and uncertain style of Go 2 (1978) reached maturity in the third album Drums And Wires (Virgin, 1979), a kaleidoscope of songs drawn from the repertoire of all genres and interpreted with typical British humor. Moulding unleashes memorable masterpieces such as the pure Merseybeat chorus of Life Begins At The Hop, the AOR of Making Plans For Nigel, and the highway country of Ten Feet Tall, while Partridge indulges in clownish delirium in the disco-rhythm vaudeville of Helicopter, the Kinks-like satirical skit of Scissor Man, the punk caricature of Outside World, and mugs it up in the melodic Who-style anthem Reel By Reel, as well as the Talking Heads-like tribal funk of Millions. The last remnant of dissonant experimentation is Complicated Game, which contrasts sharply with the album’s light tone.

The art of XTC is now defined once and for all. The leaders, Partridge and Moulding, conceive the rock song as a kind of editing box: by assembling the pieces (fragments of beat, rock and roll, hard rock, country, and so on) they build tonal toys, sometimes akin to Eno’s fizzy muzak, sometimes to Costello’s adolescent harmonies, which, once set in motion, move like eccentric 1960s moviolas. From Liverpool backing vocals to the Farfisa of Californian beaches, the entire arsenal of youth music of the past twenty years is subjected to careful revision, to test its residual commercial potential and to adopt it as a universal koine.

The roles are roughly as follows: the band’s imp, Moulding, dusts off nursery rhymes long buried in the archives of the past, while Partridge scatters intellectual extravagances throughout the harmonic fabric (humorous melodies, humble electronic gimmicks, clusters and dissonances). Completing the work are the lyrics, mostly surreal, or stupid in Zappa’s sense (the plastic society of the 1980s sent to the scrap heap). The synthesis gives rise to many small, mobile and intelligent units (in the manner of Fripp), carefully assembled into the refined mosaics that are their albums.

Partridge even goes beyond the statement “white music is music of ecstasy” and the music-hall beat of XTC, by shaping The Lure Of Salvage (1979), a depressed album fashioned from official and apocryphal pieces by the group, ingeniously electrified—a schizophrenic exercise in meta–meta-rock that alternates electro-dance numbers (the driving tape-funk of Rotary and the robotic heavy blues of New Broom), futurist world music (syncopated percussionism, African chant and jungle/workshop dissonances in The Forgotten Language Of Light, the metropolitan/metronomic chaos of Work Away Tokyo Day), and above all muted delirium-pieces (the delicate minimal impressionism of The Day They Pulled The North Pole Down and the sleepwalking bop-psychedelia of Shore Leave Ornithology).

The “ecstatic” approach to consumer music is consecrated by Black Sea (1980), where nursery rhymes and grotesquely accentuated cadences assume the inhuman perfection of clockwork mechanisms, as in the vaudeville marches Generals And Majors (another gem by Moulding), Sgt Rock and Burning With Optimism Flames, and in Partridge’s hyper-arranged beat choruses Towers Of London and Respectable Street, which present them as the Beatles of the 1980s. The rhythmic experiments of Paper And Iron, a mix of vaudeville, reggae and powwow, and of Love At First Sight, a hypnotic funk by Moulding, the overwhelming power pop of Rocket From A Bottle, the tropical orgy Living Through Another Cuba, and the sinister rhythmic and harmonic bacchanal of Travels In Nihilon ennoble a cadence and a vocal style now truly classical, inherited from the music hall, but passed through the punk storm and on the verge of flowing into android dance music.

Having reached a peak in melodicism and harmonic compactness, XTC sought new expressive forms with English Settlement (1982). The Barrett-like distorted nursery rhyme of Fly On The Wall, a caustic parable of ecstasy, and the exotic-tribal Hare Krishna of Senses Working Overtime continue the tradition of precious melodicism; and the old music-hall gait can still be heard, in modernized funk or ska versions, in Jason And The Argonauts and Down In The Cockpit. But the driving tropical jazz-rock of Melt The Guns, the solemn and strongly cadenced ska of Ball And Chain, the flamenco of Yacht Dance, the hammering African chant of Runaways, the world-beat of Nearly Africa, as well as the visceral power rock of No Thugs In Our House, mark an embrace of pan-ethnic fashions and a more obsessive and sinister rhythmic presence. The album perhaps marks the peak of XTC’s mannerism.

Mummer (1983) ratifies the shift from the driving brio of the early days to a more serene and thoughtful pop. The soundscape remains varied and pleasant, drawing inspiration from all styles without copying any of them—an attitude at once epigonic and provocative that is typical of punk civilization. The emphatic energy of the early period resurfaces in Funk Pop A Roll; the arrangements of Great Fire and Beating Of Hearts would make George Martin (of the Beatles) envious; but the more authentic tones of the new course are the pastoral one of the folk ballad Love On A Farmboy's Wages and the elegiac one of the vaudeville In Loving Memory, the relaxed mood of the ragtime Ladybird and the languid feel of the reggae Human Alchemy. The songs suffer from the flaw of being “too much” songs, to the point of no longer seeming like songs at all. The album is dominated by Partridge (of the best tracks, only In Loving Memory is by Moulding).

It is therefore no surprise that the subsequent Big Express (Virgin, 1984) is almost entirely composed by Partridge (the notable exception being the opening funk-rock of Wake Up, which nonetheless sets the tone for the whole album). The group in fact disavows that bucolic lyricism and plunges once again into urban alienation. Only the choruses of The Everyday Story Of Smalltown and All You Pretty Girls retain an innocent simplicity. The rest—from the pop of You're The Wish You Are I Had to the vaudeville of Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her and the deranged, lurching blues of Shake Your Donkey Up—is shaken by violent rhythms, abrasive arrangements, and a nervousness akin to that of the beginnings. Not by chance, the two sides close respectively with an apocalyptic ballad like This World Over, worthy of Peter Gabriel, and with the thunderous, “industrial” sonorities of Train Running Low On Soul Coal. The experimental ambitions somewhat harm the rustic pop that had taken shape on the previous album.

The EP 25 O'Clock (1985), recorded under the pseudonym Dukes of Stratosphear, is a self-caricature that plunges the band into the purest 1960s psychedelia, a baroque exercise in antiquarianism in which philological commitment prevails over affectionate homage to the flower children (My Love Explodes, 25 O'Clock, and above all the mad collage of The Mole from the Ministry). A worthy follow-up would be the album Psonic Psunspot (1987), which contains two of their happiest choruses (Vanishing Girl, Little Lighthouse) and another surreal collage (You're My Drug). The two albums would later be collected on Chips from the Chocolate Fireball.

Skylarking (1986) is in effect an attempt to coin a kind of “chamber pop,” to complete the operation that Brian Wilson failed to carry out when he withdrew from the scene. In a sense, this album brings order to the creative chaos of the previous two records, taking their most ingenious ideas and adapting them to a much calmer and more reflective mood. The band makes use of Todd Rundgren’s exquisite production tricks to conceive an electro-mechanical music that, in Partridge’s words, is a “dreamlike version of the music we were exposed to during adolescence,” and which in fact freely draws inspiration from Pet Sounds and Village Green, as well as from many 1960s hits (Meeting Place, Grass, Dear God, Earn Enough For Us).
These are, however, all very similar sing-song tunes, favored by arrangements that are perhaps too clever, so perfect as to be bland. In the end, what remains in the mind are those that, through minimal variations, stand out from the mass of calligraphic imitations, namely Big Day and Dear God. XTC are no longer reasoning about pop, but about themselves. It is, moreover, their classicism—demonstrated by a track at once neurotic and baroque like 1000 Umbrellas—that will remain one of the cornerstones of pop, now that XTC no longer pretend to make experimental music but focus on what they do best (choruses).

The new double album Oranges And Lemons (1989) surprisingly becomes a bestseller, despite boasting few gems of the stature of Mayor Of Simpleton, despite overflowing with eccentric arrangements (the minimalisms and cacophonies of One Of The Millions, the jazzy Miniature Sun) and forays into world music (Garden Of Earthly Delights, Poor Skeletons Step Out, Across The Antheap). Not unaware of Byrne’s ethno-funk, the new phase of XTC is increasingly emphatic, but increasingly stingy with compelling melodies.

The inexhaustible cornucopia of Partridge and Moulding has, over time, confirmed the influence of the meticulous pop-rock of Sgt. Pepper, both in the bright sound of the records and in the songs’ imaginative arrangements; it has confirmed that the trio (Partridge, Moulding, and guitarist Dave Gregory) is essentially a studio band rather than a club or concert act (where their intricate, over-elaborate productions would be impossible to reproduce); that their compositional method relies chiefly on contrasts, distorting the classic song structure, which tends to drift by continually changing tempo, key, and instrumentation—an effect (typical of the light music of Sgt. Pepper) that serves to heighten emotional emphasis; it confirms their Kinks-like sarcasm, and finally it confirms the primary role of vocal harmonies.

Parodistic according to the most classical canons of British humor, the “ecstasy” advocated by the group is a carefully calibrated amalgam of catchy melody, breezy rhythm, and meticulously crafted arrangement, often reaching peaks of precious baroque elaboration. A delirious rock formalism that sublimates into punk rock, Sixties revival, and exoticism as fashions change, while retaining its original features, their art has no equal in the history of rock. By elevating to art a commercial sub-genre and a mode of record production, XTC fashioned a clearly circumscribed personal genre and explored it from every angle, in keeping with the canons of classicism.

It is at least since their third album that XTC have offered nothing truly new. Their career has been merely a mannerist quest for ever more refined pop, picking up the thread where the Beatles left it, with an extra pinch of genius. In more recent years, XTC also attempted to blend into their pop roots (not to say music-hall and folk) the “ethnic” accents that were then so fashionable.

Nonsuch (Virgin, 1992) did little to improve matters. The XTC sound had by then become sheer craft, a mechanical repetition of tricks already tried in dozens of contexts: Humble Daisy returns to the pastoral mood of Mummer; Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead repeats for the thousandth time their melodic formulas; Omnibus is a psychedelic novelty that would at best suit their (thoroughly mediocre) alter egos, the Dukes of Stratosphear; Rook is one of those Partridge songs so polished that it becomes pop theory rather than pop; and Disappointed even manages to make one miss Fleetwood Mac. Even more embarrassing is the (by now stereotyped to the point of nausea) way Andy Partridge writes the songs’ allegorical lyrics, which ultimately prove as tedious as a sociology lecture. Moulding, who has been muddling along in the shadows for years, is unrecognizable (Wardance echoes This World Over, The Smartest Monkeys sounds like a parody of Partridge’s songs).

Partridge recorded Through the Hill (All Saints, 1994) with Harold Budd, a very minor work in Budd’s catalog and virtually nonexistent in Partridge’s, since his eccentric arrangements are smothered by his partner’s ambient molasses, leaving in the end little more than his quirky titles.

Fossil Fuel collects the singles from 1977 to 1992.

Andy Partridge followed Brian Wilson's parable and gladly retired from rock star to studio wizard. He "is" XTC on Apple Venus vol 1 (TVT, 1999), the album that returns the moniker to the scenes after a seven-year hiatus and that crowns Partridge among the greatest purveyors of modern pop. Dave Gregory left during the recording and Moulding plays second fiddle (figuratively, of course).
The touch is the majestic, baroque one already displayed on Skylarking, especially in River Of Orchids (that sounds like Peter Gabriel fronting a minimalistic Michael Nyman quartet), in Harvest Festival (a nostalgic piano-based number that beats the tempo with staccato strings and a wealth of acoustic instruments), and in the Queen-like operatic music-hall of Easter Theatre. The multi-part vocal harmonies of the most languid aria, I'd Like That, and the six minute fantasia of Green Man (middle-eastern syncopation and cantillation, pastoral flute), prove Partridge a pop virtuoso. The thrust is more experimental than in recent past, akin to Partridge's solo The Lure Of Salvage, except that Partridge has become a maniac of studio arrangements like Brian Wilson. The orchestral arrangements of Mike Batt and the keyboard coloring of Nick Davis and Haydn Bendall are particularly effective (whether they were inspired by Partridge or not). At least three of these songs are classics. Unfortunately at least as many songs are throwaways.
Moulding contributes two less serious songs, basically two novelties: Fruit Nut (organ and accordion music for carnivals, drenched in Beatles-ian cliches), and, best of the two, Frivolous Tonight (march-like piano, orchestral flourishes, a catchy rigmarole).
A simpler, gentler artist, Partridge is obviously ready for symphonic-level compositions.
Homespun (TVT, 1999) presents the same tracks in its original 8-track demo format.

XTC's hooks stopped being entertaining about 20 years ago. Partridge and Moulding have managed to become even more boring than Lennon and McCartney (a rare feat). The music on Wasp Star (TVT, 2000) is best summarized by its catchiest tune: Stupidly Happy, a lousy imitation of the classic XTC sound. This is Apple Venus part two, part one being the experimental, orchestral, modern (and vastly superior) one: part two is the old-fashioned one. Playground, We're All Light and I'm The Man Who Murdered Love have been heard before. The last three songs raise the standard of Partridge's pop (You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful, Church Of Women and The Wheel And The Maypole) but only enough to delay the yawning for a few minutes.

Homegrown (TVT, 2001) collects demos of Apple Venus and proves the point that XTC has always been an overwrought version of New Zealand's lo-fi pop.

A Coat of Many Cupboards Boxset (Caroline, 2002) is a 4-CD box-set of live tracks, demos, alternate takes.

Andy Partridge's eight-volume Fuzzy Warbles (Ape House, 2003) collects unreleased tracks: mostly, an impressive amount of garbage.

The Compact XTC (Caroline Records, 2005) collects the singles from 1978 till 1985.