I must have heard so many people on the radio, and in the press, going on about how underrated XTC were, how smart their songwriting was, how they deserved greater success, that I finally capitulated and bought this album for a fiver from Fopp in 2002.
I don't like it at all. The songs have that same rather smug kind of cleverness that you get with The Divine Comedy and (worst offenders of all) They Might Be Giants. (And if you dare claim that The Magnetic Fields' cleverness inhabits the same territory, I might have to get into a fight for the first time since the 1970s.) The tunes also have a catchiness that is more irritating, like a bluebottle that won't leave your beer alone, than catchy.
I wrote these words while listening to the first half of the album, and I don't think I'm going to make it through the second half.
I still like the unexplained weirdness of Making Plans for Nigel, but for me XTC begin and end with that song.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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Your comments are very narrow-minded and brief beyond words. How can one sum up a band like XTC or Luna without fully delving into their massive catalogs and exploring? You are doing a great dis-service to the uninitiated....
Posted by: Sloth | 09 January 2007 at 06:03 PM
Sorry, I wasn't trying to sum up XTC's career; I was just chatting about the very subjective thoughts I had when I listened to this CD. Neither did I have ambitions to service the uninitiated: when it comes to XTC, I'm one of them...
I don't know quite where Luna came into this, but, at the risk of once more being 'brief beyond words', I like them.
Posted by: David | 09 January 2007 at 07:44 PM