release date: Feb. 22, 1999
format: cd (COOKCD 172)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,88]
producer: Haydn Bendall, Nick Davis
label: Cooking Vinyl - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "River of Orchids" - 2. "I'd Like That" - 3. "Easter Theatre" - 5. "Frivolous Tonight" - 6. "Greenman" - 7. "Your Dictionary" - 9. "I Can't Own Her"
[ full album ]
11th studio album by XTC, and the last to feature guitarist Dave Gregory. The album is released some seven years following Nonsuch (Apr. '92) and after a controversy with the band's label, which meant that XTC had rejected to record any new material for Virgin to finally be freed from its contract and from the label. Free to do as they like, the three band members struggled to find financials to materialise a follow-up album. Apparently, Partridge & Co. had enough songs to record what should've been a double album but as a result of insufficient finances they ended up with this, which may be regarded as the first part of a conceptual work - hence the title "Volume 1".
The album differs somewhat from other XTC albums being perhaps closest to the album Skylarking from '86 - especially, when comparing to the 2014 "corrected" issue of that particular album. This one is likewise what has been labelled as neo-psychedelic and distinctively also chamber pop from a band that was reduced to its most prolific songwriters, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding during the recording sessions when Dave Gregory left the band due to 'musical differences' [ Gregory's version ].
XTC once again prove their ability to be able to renew themselves over and over again without losing themselves. With only two songs by Moulding, the album mostly contains compositions by Partridge, but although, it plays with new styles and incorporates brass and The London Sessions Orchestra it's still clearly an XTC album.
The album didn't sell in great numbers, but critics were generally quite positive about it, and it's also one of only two XTC albums to be enlisted in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
Surely, it may not contain obvious single hits - it's an album for listeners, and I really find it a bit of a surprise after Oranges and Lemons and Nonsuch, both of which saw the band explore more simplistic pop / rock traditions. Some tracks are strongly experimental, some make me think of The Divine Comedy, or Love and Rockets, others are closer to The Church, and not seldom one is reminded of bands like The Beach Boys and The Beatles, but mostly I just hear XTC on top of it all.
[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5, The Guardian, Spin, Q Magazine 4 / 5, Rolling Stone 3,5 / 5 stars ]
