release date: May 17, 2000
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,34]
producer: Nick Davis
label: Cooking Vinyl - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Playground" - 2. "Stupidly Happy" - 3. "In Another Life" - 5. "Boarded Up" - 6. "I'm the Man Who Murdered Love" - 8. "Standing in for Joe" - 10. "You and the Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful" - 12. "The Wheel and the Maypole"
[ full album ]
12th studio album by XTC is the second part in the band's "Apple Venus" (volumes) series and the remaining tracks of an intended double album. XTC is still a duo of songwriters Andrew [Andy] Partridge and Colin Moulding after guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Dave Gregory left during the recordings of Apple Venus Volume 1. As usual, Partridge has written the majority of the tracks as Moulding is credited for three out of twelve songs.
This new, second part, doesn't quite follow the style of Volume 1 as it's much more a pop / rock album in the style of psychedelic pop / art pop and power pop - rhythm-guitar rock with clear bonds to Beach Boys, The Kinks, The Beatles, Badfinger and Todd Rundgren (who produced XTC's acclaimed Skylarking) more than more experimental styles of neo-psychedelia and progressive pop found on the '99 album, which in a way seems a bit odd given the fact that Partridge, Moulding and Gregory had already written material for a double album when entering the studio back in early '98.
Where critics loved the '99 album, they are much more reluctant and luke-warm about this.
Neither do I find it as fine and innovative as Apple Venus Volume 1, but it's more than just a decent album. It's really such a pity that they couldn't finance the double album they sat out for when entering the studio in '98. I think, it would have been great. Instead of producing an album containing all songs - perhaps with a completely different track listing, which would have made it more of a conglomerate - they end up having released two rather different albums that will always be compared to one another. Some even talk about "the leftovers" from "Volume 1" when determining this is the inferior second part... No, they are just very different, but also so much in the spirit of XTC, who have never ceased to write and compose music in so many different styles without losing the band's dna. This is another fine chapter in the story of XTC - not one of their best but less suffice to make a good album.
[ allmusic.com, Q Magazine, Rolling Stone 3 / 5, NME 3,5 / 5 stars ]
