XTC Apple Venus Volume 1 Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) (TVT)
Partridge hasn’t minced words about his old friend’s departure. During the press junket that followed the album’s release he repeatedly laid the blame on Gregory’s diabetic mood swings and declared that Gregory had saved him the trouble of sacking him. When David Veitch of the Calgary Sun asked Partridge if he’d ever want to mend fences, Partridge revealed that once or twice he’d gotten drunk and dialed Gregory’s number, only to hang up before anyone answered. “What am I going to say to him? I’m just going to say to him, ‘Why haven’t you called me, you jerk? What have I done to you? My songs bought you a house, my songs bought you your beloved guitar collection, and you won’t even fucking call me.’” His feelings haven’t mellowed in the past year; earlier this month he told the Phoenix New Times, “I think he was jealous that Colin and I wrote the songs and he never wrote any songs. And he’d just come out of a love affair with Aimee Mann, ’cause she’d thrown him. He had a brief fling with her and he was too negative for her and she told him to fuck off and get a life, I think was her closing phrase.”
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As a collection of songs, that record ranks with the band’s best work, but as a recording it’s weighed down by the leaden drums, which Partridge and producer David Lord spent days programming. “Andy tends to analyze down to the minutest detail,” says Moulding in Chalkhills and Children. “We’d be listening to bass drums all fuckin’ day to see if they had any feel!” Gregory, quoted in the same book, agrees: “I went into it with a good attitude, but we were in the studio too long, dicking around with ridiculous, totally self-indulgent ideas.” “This World Over,” a moving ballad about nuclear annihilation, plays out against a reggae guitar and a metronomic, vaguely jazzy beat that make it sound like something by the Police. “Reign of Blows,” an equally bleak reverie about the right-wing climate in England and America, is buried under clattering electronic hand claps that clash with Partridge’s bluesy harmonica. The biggest shame is “You’re the Wish You Are I Had.” With its intricate verse and superbly catchy chorus, it rivals the band’s 1982 hit “Senses Working Overtime,” but its dense arrangement and dull mix flatten it out into a minor album track.
Gregory wanted XTC’s comeback effort to be a masterpiece; culled from seven years’ worth of material, it should have been. According to Song Stories, he, Moulding, and Bendall all favored a single album, but Partridge won out, and 23 songs were spread over two 50-minute discs. (Three, in fact–between volumes one and two, TVT released Homespun, which took to its logical conclusion the band’s penchant for releasing their home recordings by reconstructing the entire first volume in demo form.) Partridge was wrong: both volumes have their high points, and winnowed down to a 45-minute unit Apple Venus might hold its own against English Settlement or Skylarking. But Partridge has never shown any talent for editing himself, and, aside from Rundgren, no one else has been up to the task.
