UNDERRATED ALBUMS #24

'The impression of Flaming Pie that may stay with the listener is an elegiac one despite most of the songs being either mid or up-tempo. The year after the album's release, its ballads would have struck a chord for fans upset by the death of McCartney's wife of nearly 30 years.' 

FLAMING PIE (1997)

by Paul McCartney

There is a pretty firm consensus that Band On The Run (1973) is probably Paul McCartney’s best album since The Beatles broke up - even though it does feature a generous measure of the slapdash lyrics that so underwhelmed critics during his glory years with Wings. As the world’s most gifted tunesmith of the last 65 years or so, it has been McCartney’s blessing and curse that songs seem to come so easily to him. Consider for a moment, these standards - all composed by him while he was in The Beatles:-

McCartney and  Lynne

‘Yesterday’
‘Michelle’
‘Eleanor Rigby’
‘Here, There & Everywhere’
‘She’s Leaving Home’
‘Fool On The Hill’
‘Blackbird’
‘Hey Jude’
‘Let It Be’
‘The Long & Winding Road’



Quite apart from the mass of other great more up-tempo material he created with or without John Lennon, those classic ballads above represent a tough act to follow and, despite turning Wings into one of the world’s most successful bands in the 1970s, McCartney has been adjudged to have been too often satisfied with facile melodies and throwaway lyrics.

 

As far as I’ve been concerned, if McCartney had never composed another song after The Beatles, he’d have already done more than enough to ensure his place in the history of popular music. The notion that artists should somehow always create at their optimum level is absurd, particularly with genius, that rare flame which tends to burn brilliantly but briefly. Genius is an overused term, but one which certainly applies to McCartney and which can be heard in the ambition and Beatlesque flourishes of BOTR. Whilst he could – and still can – knock out cracking tunes almost at will, those moments of genius have naturally flashed less frequently.

If BOTR is the most Beatlesque of McCartney’s albums it may have been given a nudge by his told-you-so satisfaction in ’73 at seeing the other members of the band belatedly coming round to his way of thinking about the odious manager, Allen Klein - who they were now all busy suing. FP coincided with Paul, George and Ringo coming together again with George Martin to assemble the Anthology project, released through ’95-6 and, as McCartney confirms in the sleeve-note, that process had inspired him to try harder with what became FP.

Issued more than 4 years after his previous release (the longest gap between releases of his solo career)  FP was the 23rd of his 36 albums since The Beatles*1 (as of 2015). It proved a leisurely business in its making, with 12 of its 14 tracks being recorded with co-producer Jeff Lynne during '95-7 whilst ‘Calico Skies’ and ‘Great Day’, both co-produced with George Martin, dated back to ’92. Geoff Emerick, from the old firm back at Abbey Road in the ‘60s, led the engineering team and a certain Ringo Starr was called up for a couple of tracks. Steve Miller*2, one of McCartney’s American pals from way back when, was also stirred into the mix on several cuts.



'The Threetles'

Lynne had also worked behind as well as in front of the desk on albums by fellow Traveling Wilburys George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty as well with Ringo. At Harrison’s suggestion, he was also in the chair for the ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’ singles which trailed The Beatles Anthology in ‘95. On FP, McCartney reins in Lynne’s natural tendency towards ELO-isms and the record never sounds over-produced.

The impression of FP that may stay with the listener is an elegiac one, despite most of the songs being either mid or up-tempo. The year after the album’s release, its ballads would have struck a chord for fans upset by the death of McCartney’s wife of nearly 30 years. Diagnosed with cancer in ’95, Linda, who took all of the monochrome photographs featured in the CD booklet, died in ‘98 and, although none of the songs seem to have been written as direct responses to her condition, an air of bittersweet wistfulness pervades the slower songs even as the faster ones rock and roll in the singer’s usual cheery, get-up-and-get-on-with-it style.

Unlike many professed ‘solo’ albums by other artists, McCartney plays most of the instruments on the record himself: various guitars and keyboards, drums and percussion and, of course, bass – including the very instrument played by Bill Black on Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ some 40 years previously. 

Fittingly, therefore, given FP’s re-forging of past links, it is that stand-up bass which appears on the album’s opening track, ‘The Song We Were Singing’ which, as pointed out in the sleeve-note*3, ‘seized the soul…of the schoolboy McCartney’. A mainly acoustic number, the singer reflects nostalgically on late nights in good company spent smoking and drinking, seeing ‘the world through a glass’ and putting it to rights before fondly recalling the songs connected to those bygone times. The songs – and the track really ought to be called ‘The Songs We Were Singing’ – aren’t named, which has the effect of including the audience in the experience described, allowing them to think back to their own favourite old tunes.

It’s a fine entry, with McCartney semi-scatting the rising refrains, almost daring you to keep up with him (because you will be singing along by the second chorus). The strong start is consolidated with ‘The World Tonight’, a rock number that finds McCartney and Lynne riffing on electric guitars and which features another arresting, uplifting chorus. Although the lyric moves between both first and second person, it appears to focus on someone vulnerable to the glare of celebrity ‘hiding from a flock of paparazzi’ whilst, at the same time, being experienced enough with fame to rise above it and make their escape: ‘I go back so far, I’m in front of me.’ Paul sticks with this appealing non-sequitur, telling us in the liner-note, that John would have told him to ‘leave that one in’. And even if it doesn’t quite make sense, its inner logic, combined with the singer’s powerful delivery, makes it sound convincing.

Quality-control takes a dip with ‘If You Wanna’, the first of the tracks featuring Steve Miller, the others being ‘Young Boy’ and ‘Used To Be Bad’. These are the 3 slightest inclusions on the album. The first is a musically monotonous invitation to go on a driving holiday in a Cadillac; the second is a rather insipid stroll about ‘a young boy looking for a way to find love’; and the third is a bluesy jam about someone who er, well, used to be bad. And apart from a few mildly diverting guitar solos from Miller and some nifty bass, that’s about all that can usefully be said about these Miller Lite moments.

You would be hard pressed to find a McCartney album – apart from BOTR – that isn’t weakened by what, for him, are relatively substandard tracks and FP is, therefore no exception in that sense. Such tends to be the way of it with albums by most acts, especially in the CD era with its temptingly expanded capacity. A few good tracks may be as much as the average music fan hopes for but, where McCartney differs, is that he will probably – as in the case here – be offering listeners several really first-class songs even on albums scattered with rather ordinary material or downright dross. As I’ve said, it’s naive to expect from him the phenomenal standards set by The Beatles who, after all, could count in their ranks another genius in Lennon and a tremendous third contributor in Harrison as well as Starr – significantly more than the makeweight he’s often been lazily written off as.

Not many songwriters, however, would be capable of taking up the slack and delivering ‘Somedays’, one of this album’s undoubted highlights. The song is the quintessence of subtlety, framed by McCartney’s immaculately played acoustic and Spanish guitar accompaniment and George Martin’s tasteful arrangement for strings and woodwind. There’s a restrained poignancy about it, suggestive of a love song for Linda or George and Ringo or perhaps all of them. Lines like ‘Somedays I cry, I cry for those who live in fear’ and ‘Somedays I laugh, I laugh to think how young we were’ resonate with his relationships with them at the time the piece was written and the chorus underscores the strength of the sentiments; ‘We don’t need anybody else…Inside each one of us is love.’

Along with ‘Somedays’, three other beautiful ballads help to raise FR’s bar. ‘Little Willow’, the notes tell us, was composed ‘as a salve for [a] late friend’s children’. The unnamed friend was Ringo's first wife, Maureen who had died aged only 48 from leukaemia in '94 but, with hindsight, the piece reminds us that his own children would soon also be motherless. Another song introduced by gentle guitars, it floats on a bed of assorted keyboards and backing vocals and, in less sensitive hands, may have come over as slightly twee (not that Macca has ever worried much about that – ‘Very twee, very me’ as he sings in a C21st song, ‘English Tea’*4).

‘Little Willow’ comes from the same noble, decent corner of McCartney’s heart as ‘Hey Jude’, in which he reached out to Lennon’s first son Julian, to offer comfort in song, after the family had been broken and abandoned for Yoko Ono.  The sincerity of the song is transparent, as is its credibility and the balm it offers to a Willow assailed by ‘hard and cold’ elements is reassuring but realistic:-



Ringo and Maureen

‘Life as it happens –
Nobody warns you –
Willow hold on tight.

No-one’s out to break your heart

It only seems that way.’






An empathetic soul, McCartney, it will be recalled was, like Lennon, rendered a motherless teenager and those lines from 'Little Willow' are reminiscent of his old partner's lovely song for his other son, Sean, 'Beautiful Boy' which reflects that 'Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.'

Equally eloquent is ‘Calico Skies’ – eloquent and elegant, with McCartney playing a classical figure on an acoustic guitar to accompany a lyric of love at first sight which revolves around the refrain ‘I’ll hold you for the rest of my life’. Almost inevitably, in the light of Linda’s fate, the listener is likely to transpose this as ‘for the rest of your life’, a shift that renders the song even more poignant than it already sounds. It was though, actually written back in ’91 when the McCartneys experienced power-cuts whilst in America as a hurricane struck. Composed in an atmosphere of candlelight and wood-burning, the song was recorded the following year and only summoned up several years later to take a starring role on FP.

Perhaps inspired by skies torn asunder by the hurricane, the last verse is a plea for peace from those like McCartney himself and so many of his rock star contemporaries including, of course, the other Beatles, who were born during the upheavals of WW2. A somewhat abrupt turn in the overall context of the song, the link between apocalyptic weather and war might have been interestingly developed, but the song still works wonderfully well despite this last verse, rather than because of it.

The languorous ‘Heaven On A Sunday’ which came to McCartney whilst out in a sailboat on his own, features Linda joining in rather inconspicuously on backing vocals and their son James, making his recording debut, playing an electric guitar solo. The pellucid melody perfectly evokes a lazy, hazy day, although odd glimmers of unease arise in the lyric:-

Paul and Linda

‘Peaceful, like heaven on a Sunday,

Wishful, not thinking what to do.
We’ve been calling it love,
But it’s a dream we’re going through.

Restful, like Devon on a Monday,

Cooling my fingers in the bay.
We’ve been learning a song,
But it’s a long and lonely blues.

If I only had one love,

Yours would be the one I’d choose. 

'That’s pretty much the lyric, with those last lines forming a repeated refrain. Go figure, as they say.

At this point we should remind ourselves that there’s far more to McCartney than lovey-dovey ballads (no matter how ambiguous) and doe-eyed crooning. This, after all, is the storyteller responsible for ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Penny Lane’; the rocker on ‘I’m Down’ and ‘Lady Madonna’; the apaocalyptic screamer of 'Helter Skelter'; the wide-screen powerhouse of ‘Live & Let Die’ and the scatter par excellence  who rips up that singalong coda on ‘Hey Jude’. Well, there may be nothing on FP of quite that vintage, but there’s no shortage of hair being let down.

‘Really Love You’, an R & B jam with Ringo which developed into the first and so far only song credited to McCartney/Starkey, may be overlong and inconsequential, but they sound like they’re having a ball with Paul screaming away in joyful abandon. The title-track is a more substantial effort, distinguished by a nonsense lyric inspired by John Lennon’s zany explanation in a 1960 issue of the Mersey Beat newspaper of how The Beatles came by their name: ‘It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, ‘From this day on you are Beatles with an A’. Only half the length of ‘Really Love You’, but twice as good, ‘Flaming Pie’ gallops along in highly entertaining style (apparently the idea came to McCartney on horseback) with the listener being exhorted to ‘Go ahead, have a vision!’ The words are daft and fun: ‘Stick my tongue out and lick my nose…Cut my toes off to spite my feet’ and an exuberant McCartney bashes the whole thing out with his simple but effective piano and drums.

‘Souvenir’ is an impressive mid-tempo soul song which again finds the singer in great voice. It’s another case of him reaching out to comfort someone who is ‘fed up shedding too many tears’ and offering love ‘like a friend’. If the positive connotation of the title-word gets a little lost here - ‘Everybody’s got a handful of fear / But tomorrow it may only be a souvenir’ – then it barely matters in an effective genre piece which features a horn section as well as a Beatlesque ascending guitar figure and a nostalgically crackling stylus run-out groove.

There’s a showstopping air of ‘Hey Jude’ about ‘Beautiful Night’, which begins with a downbeat Paul at the piano before Ringo’s drums swing in at the start of the second verse (‘You and me together / Nothing feels so good’) before George Martin’s orchestra sweeps across the background. Then the tempo picks up for a terrific coda with fanfaring trumpets and trombone, guitar solos and Ringo singing the title phrase in that oddly inimitable way of his. A studio breakdown at the end creates the impression of a splendid time had by all with either Paul or Ringo exclaiming ‘Lawdy, lawdy!'

If ‘Beautiful Night’ is the record’s finale, then ‘Great Day’ follows almost like an afterthought rather than an encore. Both songs were old ones. ‘Great Day’ sounds like – and may actually have been around in some form at the sessions for McCartney’s very first, eponymous solo album in 1970. It shares the lo-fi, minimalistic charm of that deceptively influential record although, like ‘Calico Skies’ it was recorded over 20 years later and 3 years before FP began in earnest. A simple little tune that might bring to mind John Martin, it declares its author’s enduring optimism and features a very present Linda on harmonies. It also provides an appropriate ending to the last album McCartney released during his first wife’s lifetime.

                                                     * * * * *

The Grammy-nominated FP became a transatlantic #2 on the charts. McCartney’s pop albums usually go Top 10, often Top 5 – in the UK there have been 7 #1s and 6 in the US. ‘Young Boy’ (#19), ‘The World Tonight’ (#23), ‘Beautiful Night’ (#25) made brief appearances on the UK singles chart*5.

People expecting more direct songs about his late wife might have been surprised by McCartney’s next album, Run Devil Run (1999), a collection of spirited Rock & Roll covers with a couple of originals amongst the oldies. His fans may have been actively dismayed by Driving Rain (2001), by which time he had been involved in a new, high-profile romance with Heather Mills for some time. Apart from the odd verse here and there which might have been about Linda, the album mainly featured what were effectively a series of love letters to Heather. Although the relationship was already rumoured to be tempestuous, a short and disastrous marriage issued which produced a daughter before a luridly public and expensive divorce went through the courts.

Driving Rain resulted in McCartney’s lowest-ever position on the UK album chart - #46. Subsequent records have fared better critically and commercially since he split with Heather and his fans seem to have recovered from their disenchantment with him. The more recent albums have all been better than the dreary DR*6 – but not as good as FP. His 3^rd marriage in 2011 to Nancy Shevell, a very rich American business woman, has so far proved less contentious than his union with Heather – or, we should recall, that with Linda, who was herself reviled during her early years with the great man…

N. B.
*1 – As well as the albums credited as McCartney solo albums, there were another 7 with Wings plus 5 classical releases and a further 7 miscellaneous outings, including the ambient electronica projects recorded with Youth under the Fireman alias.

*2 – The Steve Miller Band were a successful American album outfit who started in the late ‘60s. They had several big US hit singles between ’73-81 starting with the transatlantic #1 ‘The Joker’ in ’76.

*3 – Apart from McCartney’s own remarks, the sleeve-note includes commentary credited to a Geoff Baker (who I couldn’t track down) and Mark Lewisohn, the world’s leading authority on The Beatles.

*4 – ‘English Tea’ appears on the album Chaos & Creation In The Back Yard (2005).

*5 – In 2015, ‘FourFive Seconds’ with Kanya West & Rihanna became McCartney’s first UK/US Top 10 hit since the 1980s – unless you count the 2012 Xmas #1 charity version of ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ by The Juice Collective on which he was one of a number of celebrities gathered to raise money for the Hillsborough disaster fund. In 1989, the year of the tragedy, McCartney had also appeared with other pop stars on a version of ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’ an earlier fund-raising #1. The hit single with that giant of Rap and egomania, West and Rihanna, was a curiosity on which McCartney didn’t actually sing. The roll-call of songwriters credited on the somewhat slight song – 9 - almost rivalled the number of names on the charity singles…

*6 – DR wasn’t all bad: ‘Heather’, which was played at the wedding, has a lovely roll to it and is certainly better than ‘Here Comes The Bride’, whilst ‘Your Loving Flame’ has strong elements of classic McCartney about it.

EDOUARD MANET (1832-83)

If you go down deep into the woods today,
Forget the picnic, you’re in for a big surprise:
They’re in the shade with only a suggestion of sky.
They regard you coolly, you wonder if it’s all it implies,
Redden and look deep down into that redhead’s eyes,
Reflecting whether you’re here to play, or merely prey.

A little nervously you knock, enter the boudoir

To meet that nerveless, full-on gaze so steady.
You note the heels, her left hand feigning modesty
Or simply waiting to see the colour of your money
As she turns from your black flower-girl, she’s ready;
And it’s time now to enquire of yourself, if you are.

You look down on her, but she looks down on you too,

Between the mirror’s crowded blur and the bar’s clutter,
With her sad eyes and a mouth that would melt butter.
You’re lost for words struggling in vain to utter
As she waits patiently for you to just press the shutter;
Beautifully bored, she stands and stares straight through you.
  
The lacy ladies on the balcony smile sweetly for Goya,
But you’re uneasy with those behind in the shadows
As you watch your own version gather and compose,
Your ladies expecting rain as light fades and time slows.
Meanwhile, Magritte’s coffins wait on the day to close.
Do you confess now to a growing sense of paranoia?

Envoi

This man with a beard and boater, who turns on his chair

At the window, watching the girls in the summer blue
Beyond the garden fence, in the middle of the view,
Is your brother, painted by his wife: he looks like you;
But you fade now into a darker, decomposing blue
As the boats pass you by in the sweet, poisoned air.

(2015)

Each of the first four stanzas focus on a particular Manet painting. Sequentially, they are:-

The Luncheon On The Grass (pictured); Olympia; Bar At The Folies Bergere and The Balcony. The first two were highly controversial, although Olympia had notable antecedents in Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, Titian’s Venus  Of Urbino and Goya’s The Naked Maja. The fourth was also ‘after Goya’ and before Magritte’s surrealist version; it also features - sat left in the foreground – Manet’s sister-in-law and fellow artist, Berthe Morisot – who painted Eugene Manet On The Isle Of Wight. This is the picture which relates to the final stanza – it was completed in 1875,by which time Edouard Manet’s health was in terminal decline due mainly to syphilis.

 

 

UNDERRATED ALBUMS #23

‘an ambitious and ornate work characterised by acoustic and orchestral arrangements. Very few acts end their careers with such a strong piece of work (The Beatles’ Abbey Road is one that springs to mind). And it is my contention that AV is XTC’s magnum opus.

Apple Venus (1999) by XTC

Try to describe XTC and you’re likely to use terms  such as ‘quintessentially English’, ‘psychedelic’, ‘retro’, ‘arty’, ‘wordy’ and ‘quirky’. Their late-‘70s early work was punky, spikey New Wave before settling into a more mature style of intelligent, tuneful, well produced pop.

6 singles and 9 albums seems a rather mean Top 40 yield for such a well-respected band – especially considering that ‘Senses Working Overtime’ (#10) from  the English Settlement album (#5) were the only times they ever reached UK Top 10. They never quite cracked the US Top 40 either - furthermore, brilliant singles like the scathingly atheist ‘Dear God’ and the dazzling pastorale of ‘Love On A Farmboy’s Wages’ barely grazed the charts. As their leader Andy Partridge wryly reflected on ‘Mayor Of Simpleton’, another fine single which duly puttered out at #46, he didn’t ‘know how to write a big hit song’

Given that their work was usually well-received, one wondered why, in a recording career spanning over 20 years, there hadn’t been more hits. Clearly, Partridge’s nervous breakdown and increased stage-fright, which heralded the band’s withdrawal from touring in ’82, didn’t help, but my theory is that they tended to repeat themselves too often and would have benefited from pruning releases which were often effectively double-albums. Partridge’s voice was distinctive, but lacked range and tended to become rather monotonous when stretched out over too many songs similar in structure and tempo. In addition, like his contemporary, Elvis Costello, he sometimes crammed too many words into his lyrics, which led to a reduction in clarity and impact. The band’s cheerfully unashamed tendency to wear their ‘60s influences on their sleeves may also have put some listeners off.

The original XTC - L-R - Andy Partridge,
Colin Moulding, Terry Chambers, Dave Gregory.

This though, is to carp. XTC were quite simply one the great British bands of their time - two of the best actually, if we take into account their ‘60s-psych alter-egos The Dukes Of Stratosphear (see Underrated Albums #). Most critics and fans seem to regard the Todd Rundgren-produced Skylarking (1986) and the sprawling, sporadic Oranges & Lemons (1989) as their best albums, although Nonsuch (1992), has deservedly gathered a reputation in recent years. The most melodic set they made on Virgin, it preceded a protracted dispute with the company and a seven years hiatus before Apple Venus appeared on their own Idea Records label

Originally conceived as a double with what became Wasp Star (2000), AV was XTC’s 13^th and penultimate album release. The electric guitar rock of WS (also known as AV Vol.2) is a more conventional XTC record, whereas AV is an ambitious and ornate work characterised by acoustic and orchestral arrangements. Very few acts end their careers with such a strong piece of work (The Beatles’ Abbey Road is one that springs to mind). And it is my contention that AV is XTC’s magnum opus.

The title of the album relates to the famous C15th century painting by Botticelli The Birth Of Venus, but was also lifted by Partridge from a song on Nonsuch  called ‘Then She Appeared’, a janglingly pretty exercise in imagery which begins ‘Then she appeared, apple Venus on a half-open shell’. The phrase, highly suggestive of pastoral freshness and sensuality, beauty and betrayal, is clearly illustrative of themes which will follow on the record.

By no means their only album to centre around pastoral themes, AV rises above the rest of their catalogue as a coherent and cohesive whole. Unlike so much of their work, there is little or no slack cut on this record. The first track, ‘River Of Orchids’ opens with plucked strings and a bowed bass which take up the sound of dripping water before tootling brass accompanies Partridge outlining a fantasy of ‘a river of orchids where we had a motorway’ and walking into London on his hands ‘smelling like a Peckham Rose’. The song’s eco-message of the grass being greener ‘when it bursts up through concrete’ with Partridge dreaming of ‘the car becoming a fossil’ harks back nostalgically to an C18th Peckham noted for its market gardens and William Blake seeing a vision of an angel in a tree. It’s an unusual curtain-raiser and it marches along in its own Mardi Gras fashion for close on 6 minutes without losing its charm.

A jaunty acoustic guitar carries ‘I’d Like That’, a romantic ditty which name-checks Albert &Victoria; Hector &Helen Of Troy and Nelson & Lady Hamilton, whilst Partridge aspires to cycle down the lane in the rain, lay in front of the fire and float away in bed with the object of his desire. With its backing harmonies, humming and general good vibes, it recalls one of The Kinks’ sunnier afternoons.

‘Easter Theatre’ enacts the burgeoning of renewed life in spring with fanfaring brass, throbbing bass, electric guitar and trumpet solos and vocal harmonies. Partridge’s rite of spring is a joyously erotic affair in which Easter makes her entrance ‘dressed in yellow yolk’ with a ‘rainbow mouth’ and, ahem, ‘chocolate nipple brown’  as ‘flowers climb erect’ in a landscape that is generally bustin’ out all over. ‘I’d Like That’ and ‘Easter Theatre’ were released as singles but despite their tuneful upbeat positivity, both disappeared without trace    

As punning titles go, ‘Knights In Shining Karma’ is likely to make one either smile or wince – it might almost as well have been called Nights In Shining Armour. The notions of karma and dharma – destiny and oneness - are at the heart of a lullaby which conjures a nocturnal refuge presided over by the guardian angel knights. Lyrically, it’s a vague piece of whimsy – the ‘jealous winter sun cold as vichysoisse’ had me running to the dictionary (well, clicking  anyway) and returning doubtful that a cold cream of vegetable soup was the most effective image, but the charming tune, Beatlesque guitars and soothing vocal all work together in a pleasing whole.

Nevertheless, ‘Frivolous Tonight’ by Colin Moulding, follows as something of a welcome return to solid earth, as is often the case with contributions by the band’s bass player and second singer-songwriter. Albeit responsible for hits like ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ and ‘Generals & Majors’, Moulding was very much the major to Partridge’s general in XTC, usually averaging about a couple of songs an album – as is the case here.

And then there were three - L-R -
Partridge, Moulding, Gregory.

The mid-tempo tune, cheerfully plonked out on a double-tracked bar-room piano, opens with ‘Let us talk about some trivial things we like / A bit of this and that / Let’s chew the fat.’ Andy might be tucked up in his bucolic bye-byes, but Col is down the pub in his Raelbrook shirt, drinking stout, telling mother-in-law jokes (jumping to attention when she actually appears), kicking out the boring git who insists on talking shop and generally having a laugh with his mates and the girls. Moulding’s gentle Wiltshire burr, bathed in occasional harmonies and warm horns makes for a good night out and the song is reminiscent of some of McCartney’s lighter moments

We can assume that these frivolities are taking place in a village pub and the next track takes us out to the green and back to the woods. ‘Greenman’ features Partridge’s most economical lyric of the record so far, along with the first conspicuous use of drums and a fuller orchestration with sweeping strings dancing us round the maypole in a glorious celebration of paganism. The spirit of the Green Man of ancient forest lore who, ‘for a million years…has been your lover / Down through your skin to the core’, is summoned up in fine style, ending with this image of heathen mischief: ‘See the Greenman blow his kiss from high church wall / And unknowing church will amplify his call’.

With ‘Your Dictionary’, the benign mood of the album takes a sudden twisted turn into what Partridge afterwards described as ‘a childish tantrum of a song’. Well, given that this is one of rock’s great divorce songs, he can be excused the unambiguously bitter, self-pitying tone of most of the words and melody. To an acoustic guitar strummed hard, Partridge grinds out the words: ‘H-A-T-E – is that how you spell me in your dictionary?’ And so it goes on – ‘friend’ spelled ‘F-U-C-K’, ‘me’ spelled ‘S-H-I-T’ etc. alongside other observations such as ‘Now that I can see it’s the queen’s new clothes, / Now that I can hear all your poison prose.’

The verse and rhyme structure of this song is as coldly precise as some of the earlier ones are warm and woolly. Halfway through, the guitar is joined by piano and cellos in the bridge and the music, if not the lyric, starts to thaw, hinting at a wiser, less wrenching attitude waiting in the final verse.

‘Your Dictionary’ can be compared to two other fine break-up songs: Elvis Costello’s ‘I Want You’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Idiot Wind’. Unlike the sustained and seething disgust for himself and his partner in the Costello song, Partridge manages, like Dylan, in the end to temper his sulking, suffering and spite. Whereas Dylan finally switches from the accusatory 2^nd person ‘you’ to the 3^rd person plural ‘we’ to finally admit mutual responsibility, Partridge moves from a minor to major key in a spirit of reconciliation and moving on:

‘Now your laughter has a hollow ring,
But the hollow ring has no finger in,

So let’s close the book and let the day begin

And our marriage be undone.’

Good humour is restored with Moulding’s other inclusion, ‘Fruit Nut’, his hymn to pottering about in his garden shed, keeping himself sane by growing fruit – although some see him as being ‘out of [his] tree’ and ‘a strawberry fool’. A whistle and concertina with an occasional wash of strings lead a Kinksy lollop, but it’s a slighter offering than ‘Frivolous Tonight’, albeit one which has Moulding’s amiable vocal providing sweet relief after the sourness of ‘Your Dictionary’. It’s the sort of tune your milkman might have whistled back in the day (which is not to denigrate it in the least).
 

‘I Can’t Own Her’ is next and it lifts us back up into the clouds on an orchestral breeze to where Partridge’s fool on the hill, adopting the persona of a rich man, reflects that money and status can’t buy him love. Another very finely wrought song as solidly built as its theme is airy, it features an exceptional vocal by Partridge - clear, controlled and engaged with its confident, crafted lyric:-

‘I own this river, I own this town -
All of its climbers and its winos sliding down,
But I can’t own her and I never will,
No, I can’t own her and that’s a bitter pill.’



And then there were two -
Moulding and Partridge

 By now, Partridge is on a roll, and the penultimate track, ‘Harvest Festival’ may well be XTC’s finest moment. No matter what your educational background, almost everyone in Britain will remember the school harvest festival with fond waves of nostalgia and Partridge connects eloquently with that universality, recollecting the common scene with simple details of flowers round the altar, tinned fruit, hymn books and canvas chairs and ‘children with baskets…their hair cut like corn, neatly combed in their rows’.

 If, however, the song was merely an evocative reminiscence, it would not be a masterpiece. What lifts it into that realm is the moving narrative flowing through childhood in the present tense into reflective adulthood with a brief change of key and tone before settling into positive hopes and wishes for the future.

Prefigured by the early image of the ‘chosen’ pair of children walking ‘hand in hand to the front of the hall’, we become aware of the narrator as a boy catching the eye of the girl sat in another row who was, perhaps, his first love. The ‘longing look’ she gave him was ‘best of all’ (cleverly rhymed with festival) and ‘more than enough to keep [him] fed all year’. 

The song starts with piano and a clattering of chairs as the assembly is seated. Partridge’s voice, suffused with the bittersweet yearning of nostalgia, comes in to be joined by bass, cellos and drums thumping like young hearts, then plaintive recorders – and if it hasn’t grabbed you by this time, then you must be made of very stolid stuff indeed. We then learn from the downbeat transition that ‘the exams and crops all failed’ - although the Apple Venus of Andy’s eye passed - never, it seemed, to be seen again, thereby compounding the sting of the post-school reality-check.

But years later, after a fleeting return to the addled cynicism of ‘Your Dictionary’, the ‘screwed and cut and nailed’ narrator receives ‘out of nowhere [an] invitation in gold pen’. Cue more flowers round an altar and wishing the dream girl well - who still fondly remembers that boy in the harvest hall - on the occasion of her marriage. A beautiful song – and, frankly, if it seems too sentimental, you must have a heart of stone.

With ‘The Last Balloon’, AV floats away into the ether – as, indeed, did XTC (although Wasp Star, recorded at the same sessions, would be released the following year). It’s a low-key conclusion: a dream of escaping the nightmares of the real world at its worst. After loading up ‘the balloon from fear’ with men and women – exhorted in turn to leave behind their ‘bombs and knives’ and ‘gems and furs’ - the children, embodying hopes for the future, climb aboard.

The rise of the balloon and Partridge’s voice have been counterpointed between the verses by his dark commands to ‘Drop it all’ - and it becomes clear that we’re not dealing with ‘Up, Up & Away’ here. The adults realise they’re ‘weighed down by [their] evil past’ and that the balloon will never soar away with the children into a better future unless they, the guilty adults, are ‘dropped like so much sand’. Guy Barker’s flugelhorn, which has been hovering amidst the subtle strings and a guitar treated to sound like an unearthly harpsichord, comes into its own with an ambiguous jazz coda after echoing, muffled plunges evoke the jettisoning of dead weight. Ending thus with bangs and a whimpering, it’s a somewhat disconsolate and disturbing song to go out on.

Apple Venus thereby fades away into a vacuum leaving listeners uncertain as to whether they should feel uplifted or downcast at the end of an album that has ranged through various moods, offering observations about landscape and love and broaching serious questions about the world we live in and the ecological challenges it faces. Although it provides no easy answers, it is a record full of warmth and humanity, living up to the tagline on its cover: ‘Do what you will but harm none’. It features some of Andy Partridge’s best songs and singing and is also an object lesson in how to use an orchestra sensitively in rock and pop music. The arrangements, by the way, are all by Gavin Wright of The London Sessions Orchestra, although none other than Mike Batt worked on ‘Greenman’ and ‘I Can’t Own Her’.

A little sadly, XTC had been fragmenting for a long time, - with them using one session drummer after another and losing keyboardist Dave Gregory, who actually left during the AV sessions -  and they finally called it a day a few years later. Apart from a lone solo album released in 1980, Partridge seems in no hurry to make another and contents himself with a cottage industry gathering XTC demo’s and rarities on his own Ape House label. Moulding has been seldom heard of in the C21st  and there is a strong sense of the band having run its natural course. They left behind them a fine body of work, of which AV is the fulfilment and culmination of their best efforts.

(IGR 2015)