ewe2
04-03-2006, 08:21 AM
How can you smile and forecast
Weather’s getting better
And you’ll soon forget her
If you let the sunshine come through
How can you smile and forecast
Weather’s getting better
If you never let a girl rain all over you
And just when I thought that my vista was golden in hue
One thousand umbrellas opened to spoil the view
-- 1000 Umbrellas
Like the Police, XTC began life as a quirky punk band and gradually grew out of it. Skylarking represents the point where the band finally shook off its identity crisis brought on by an end to touring, beginning hopefully with English Settlement but suffering a relapse on Mummer. What really provided the spark for this revival in musical fortune was the side project 25 O'Clock (see Chips From The Chocolate Fireball (http://forum.zgeek.com/showthread.php?t=47713)), where Partridge, Moulding and Gregory finally succumbed to their '60s obsession. Even more interesting was their choice of producer for the new album, Todd Rundgren, the odd pop genius of the '70s.
The result was one of the great pop records of the decade, and the beginning of inevitable Beatle comparisons. To be fair, any album vaguely musical with a unifiying theme was being compared to the Beatles in the '80s, but given the combined obsessions of the band and producer, perhaps the seasonal theme and deliberate late '60s sound is just as fair a comparison with Brian Wilson as Lennon & co.
Beginning appropriately with Summers Cauldron with the brilliant segue into Grass, both hypnotic and faintly psychedelic, the fertility theme continues intoThe Meeting Place, but from there we move into Autumn with romantic disappoinment in the drizzly trio of Supergirl, Ballet for a Rainy Day and 1000 Umbrellas. The original side ended with the explicit topic of Season Cycle. Earn Enough for Us, Big Day and Another Satellite continue the thematic descent through the Winter end of the cycle. But renewal is at hand and Mermaid Smiled, and the paradoxical Dying and Sacrificial Bonfire begin the upward movement of Spring.
One oddity of the album's American release was the inexplicable replacement of Mermaid Smiled with the British single Dear God . Not only did it permanently derail the flow of the album for critics, but one can't help feeling that the American market was not the place to push an atheistic agenda. The re-release has brought back Mermaid Smiled but bizarrely, not in its original place, where Dear God still sits.
Skylarking flows unstoppably, every song stands alone but the production brilliantly unifies them. If you love your pop with a bounce, Skylarking is the perfect walking companion.
Weather’s getting better
And you’ll soon forget her
If you let the sunshine come through
How can you smile and forecast
Weather’s getting better
If you never let a girl rain all over you
And just when I thought that my vista was golden in hue
One thousand umbrellas opened to spoil the view
-- 1000 Umbrellas
Like the Police, XTC began life as a quirky punk band and gradually grew out of it. Skylarking represents the point where the band finally shook off its identity crisis brought on by an end to touring, beginning hopefully with English Settlement but suffering a relapse on Mummer. What really provided the spark for this revival in musical fortune was the side project 25 O'Clock (see Chips From The Chocolate Fireball (http://forum.zgeek.com/showthread.php?t=47713)), where Partridge, Moulding and Gregory finally succumbed to their '60s obsession. Even more interesting was their choice of producer for the new album, Todd Rundgren, the odd pop genius of the '70s.
The result was one of the great pop records of the decade, and the beginning of inevitable Beatle comparisons. To be fair, any album vaguely musical with a unifiying theme was being compared to the Beatles in the '80s, but given the combined obsessions of the band and producer, perhaps the seasonal theme and deliberate late '60s sound is just as fair a comparison with Brian Wilson as Lennon & co.
Beginning appropriately with Summers Cauldron with the brilliant segue into Grass, both hypnotic and faintly psychedelic, the fertility theme continues intoThe Meeting Place, but from there we move into Autumn with romantic disappoinment in the drizzly trio of Supergirl, Ballet for a Rainy Day and 1000 Umbrellas. The original side ended with the explicit topic of Season Cycle. Earn Enough for Us, Big Day and Another Satellite continue the thematic descent through the Winter end of the cycle. But renewal is at hand and Mermaid Smiled, and the paradoxical Dying and Sacrificial Bonfire begin the upward movement of Spring.
One oddity of the album's American release was the inexplicable replacement of Mermaid Smiled with the British single Dear God . Not only did it permanently derail the flow of the album for critics, but one can't help feeling that the American market was not the place to push an atheistic agenda. The re-release has brought back Mermaid Smiled but bizarrely, not in its original place, where Dear God still sits.
Skylarking flows unstoppably, every song stands alone but the production brilliantly unifies them. If you love your pop with a bounce, Skylarking is the perfect walking companion.