FFWD Weekly: February 25th, 1999

XTC
Apple Venus: Volume 1
TVT Records

• First album of new material for the band (now just a duo of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding) since 1992’s Nonsuch, and the first for their new record label TVT.

• Volume 2 – reported to be a more pop rock record – is scheduled for release in fall of this year.

Worth the wait?

Well, yes and... no.

For longtime fans of XTC, any new material from the greatest living pop band is welcome. That said, for longtime fans of XTC, they’ve heard it all before.

Apple Venus: Volume 1 certainly isn’t eight-years worth of the best material XTC could muster. A least I hope not. What it is is a meander through melodious fields the band has been seeding since their 1983 release Mummer. It’s inhabited by orchestral songs that wander the lush and familiar provincial pop pathways – as earthy as they are ethereal – viewing with wide-eyed amazement subjects as common as seasonal changes, blades of grass, bubbling brooks and, of course, love.

Andy Partridge, responsible for writing nine of the 11 tracks, sounds as if he’s spent the last seven years steeped in nostalgia, trying to figure out why his material has never found a wider audience, and instead of moving forward he’s attempted to re-write his past – the words, the melodies, the harmonies. Mind you, out of his new old songs, at least four of those rank amongst his finest, with the brilliant "Easter Theatre" and "Your Dictionary" finding him at the height of his lyrical powers.

Even Colin Moulding, author of the remaining two tracks, hasn’t moved forward, though his songs are no longer the liabilities that they sometimes could be – his radiant "Frivolous Tonight" stands out as one of his finest yet.

No, XTC’s latest isn’t the dear godsend many were waiting for, but it’s still more enjoyable than 95 per cent of the music being made today. And if Volume 1 is just a necessary step towards Partridge and Moulding putting the past behind them before landing in the present and dazzling us with Volume 2....

Worth the wait? We’ll wait and see.