Apple Venus, Volume One - XTC (1999)

 

Apple Venus, Volume One came about after a seven year strike XTC had conducted against their parent company Virgin Records. 

In the end, they got free of their contract and signed to a minor label, whose minimal budget meant that the massive two disc album leader Andy Partridge had envisioned would be impossible -- so he decided that the project would be released in two parts. Apple Venus Volume One was the first part. 

Over the years they had stockpiled quite a few songs,  but they kept Apple Venus Volume One purely to songs written from 1992-1993. Many of Andy's  demos had been recorded on 8 track, and were pretty much fully fledged, fleshed out releasable recordings, leaving Gregory little to do creatively on the majority of the songs, which caused the usual friction that existed in the band.

The final straw came when Andy commissioned Dave to write out the arrangement for a full orchestra -- and Dave returned with an arrangement for a string quartet, reasoning that it would be cheaper and also that it would give him some creative input into the album. Andy refused, there was a horrible argument and Dave left the band -- for good. As a result Dave played on only seven songs on the album, and some of them were Colin's -- Andy seems to have not played on Colin's songs at all. Andy would remark that XTC was not really a band any more, but a "a brand", which echoed DAve's own observation that they were not band but "two songwriters and a guitarist."


Apple Venus Volume 1 is defiitely in my top 5 XTC albums, but I have quibbles.

Andy's songs are among the most beautiful he'd ever written, in the same elegant lush Brian Wilson/Paul McCArtney vein that he'd been mining ever since "Pale and Beautiful" from the second Dukes of Stratsophear album.

Colin's songs are more innocuous, slice-of-life songs about the petty bourgoisie lifestyle he lived: Noel Coward, music hall type stuff, twee as all get out but enjoyable. But....

I don't think Colin's songs fit with Andy's songs at all and think they would be better off on an album or EP  of their own. 

I like Colin's songs but there's just something weird about these middle-aged hymns to middle class (in the American sense) life and the way they clash with the grand and eloquent deeply romantic music that Andy makes here. I mean Andy's writing about love won and lost, about divorce and the cycle of life and connecting it all with this grand naturism...and Colin's you know, writing about playing with trains in his shed or having a dinner party. It just doens't fit for me, and this is the. third XTC  album in a row I feel this way about.

I also note that Andy is basically nowhere to be found on Colin's songs (If what Dave said is true -- that they were recorded without Andy while he was away) and it was mostly all just Dave 'n' Colin. I mean, that's a flaw, in the album and in the band. Maybe that's why Andy started calling XTC a "brand." 

So for me this is a flaw on Apple Venus Volume One and makes me want to take Colin's songs and just make a playlist of them so Andy's more ambitious visions can flow on shorter album/playlists. And if I'm doing that to an album, it means I don't respect it as much as I could, which is odd for an album on which every single song is beloved and at least five sound like masterpieces to me.

I'm also uncertain about the sequencing, and to some extent think that the album could benefit from an actual rock song or two (Andy's vision dictated that Volume Two would be the rock album -- which it was, but that's another review.....)

So, I feel like after all that criticism I should not vote it higher than, oh, a 4.3/5 I want to rate it higher, it's probably number four on my all time XTC list, though, to be honest maybe "Mummer" is #4, actually.

In a song-by-song thread I conducted on the Steven Hoffman audiophile forum, "Easter Theatre" was the highest rated song. Here it is:



The sound could be better. This is by no means the worst sounding CD from this era I've heard, but there is not much space on many of the tracks and I'm in constant fear for my ears when listening on headphones and keep having to turn it down. Very compresseed and stifled sounding, like most albums from 1999. A crime for music so so  pale, precious and beautiful.

Spotify Link:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3KzwlFAMKB3eVsCP2NyDwN?si=7b8f6a6d6e7c46a1

Coming Up:

A.M. Wilco

A.T.O.M. - Carbon Silicon

ABBA - ABBA 

ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits

Abbey Road - The Beatles

Achtung, Baby! U2

Actually - Pet Shop Boys

Adult/Child- The Beach Boys

Aerosmith's Greatest Hits

After The Gold Rush - Neil Young

Afterglow - Crowded House

Aftermath (UK Version) - The Rolling Stones

Against The Odds: 1974-1982 Blondie (three disc version)

Aimee Mann Live at St. Ann's Warehouse

Aiming For Your Head - Betchadupa

The Album -- ABBA

The Album That Never Was - The Kinks

All Four One - The Motels

All Over the Place - The Bangles

All Summer Long -- The Beach Boys

All the Great Hits -- Diana Ross

All Things Must Pass -- George Harrison

All This Useless Beauty -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions

All-Time Greatest Hits - Neil Diamond

Alluvium -- Eddie Rayner

Almost Blue -- Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Almost Summer - Celebration

Alpha Mike Foxtrot -- Wilco*

The Alphabetchadupa - Betchadupa

Altitude - ALT

American Idiot Green Day*

American Prayer -- The Doors

Amnesiac Radiohead*

And I Feel Fine...The Best of the IRS years (1982-1987) - R.E.M.

Animals - Pink Floyd

Anodyne - Uncle Tupelo

Another Life - Another Life

Another Music in Another Kitchen: The Buzzcocks

Another Side of Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan

Anthology: Diana Ross & The Supremes

Anthology: Smokey Robinson & The Beatles

Anthology 1: The Beatles

Anthology 2: The Beatles

Anthology 3 The Beatles

Anthology: North South, East West - Tim Finn

Apple Venus: Volume One -- XTC

Apollo 18 - They Might Be Giants

The ArchAndroid: Janelle Monae

Are the Village Green Preservation Society -- The Kinks

Are Well-Respected Men - The Kinks

Armed Forces -Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Around the World in a Day - Prince

Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) - The Kinks

At My Piano - Brian Wilson

Autoamerican - Blondie

Automatic for the People - R.E.M.

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