Drums and Wires

by

XTC

Edit

On their third album it's bye bye Barry Andrews and organ and hello Dave Gregory and XTC achieve their "classic sound", ie one that lasted through Black Sea and English Settlement. On Drums And Wires Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding really came into their own as songwriters and Terry Chambers first displayed his peculiar and inimitable THUD WHACK drumming style. The freneticism of the first two albums was tempered by a growing and unique musical sophistication, yet there's an economy of style that reflects that these songs were supposed to be played live in front of actual people. Andy Partridges' crippling stage fright was still several years off and the complex arrangements of Skylarking even farther. My introduction to XTC was the second album Go2 and so when Barry Andrews was kicked out I didn't know what to expect. Well what I got was one of the nuttiest and finest albums these clever pop hooligans ever made. From Colin Mouldings' early hit Making Plans For Nigel to Andy Partridges' most loopy song Helicopter, it's sheer mad genius.

A huge leap forward in terms of songwriting and arrangement, XTC's "Drums and Wires" is a new beginning for the band, not the least of which due to the personnel changes that occured in the band-- keyboardist Barry Andrews departed, evidentally due to an arguement about songwriting contributions with principle songwriter and guitarist Andy Partridge. Left as a trio, Partridge, bassist/songwriter Colin Moulding, and drummer Terry Chambers recruited guitarist/keyboardists Dave Gregory. With Gregory, the band began exploring concepts of texture in more detail. Looking at the albums over 25 years later without any sentimental attachment to the early material (I was about 18 months old when "Drums and Wires" was released), it's clear that Andrews' buzzing organ sounds were a limitation on both Partridge and Moulding as songwriters, and with Gregory they began exploring more.

Perhaps the most immediately noticable improvement in songwriting comes in Colin Moulding-- whereas on the previous two albums his contributions felt underdeveloped at best, here pretty much all the standouts are his and they benefit from an extraordinary sense of arrangement. Opener "Making Plans for Nigel" features a pulsing rhythm section and out-of-phase guitars chugging along over which Moulding paints his picture of planning your child's life in a calm and developed voice. Really, it's the kind of thing that based on the first couple records, you'd never dream Moulding had in him. Likewise, the spiralling acoustic guitars of "Ten Feet Tall" and the churning excitement of the near psychedelic "This is the Way" grab your attention.

Partridge, for his part, sticks to his guns with the ska/punk new wave stuff, although there's a distinct improvement, both in the confidence of his vocals ("Helicopter") and composition (the goofy "When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty"-- check the two guitar lines bouncing in and out of skanks and lines).

The real problem is that the album seems to fizzle as it goes on, and the second half features a bunch of totally unmemorable tracks ("Outside World", "Reel By Reel"). Throughout, there's also some examples of forced melodrama that just comes off horribly (the reciting of the title of "Complicated Game", although the fierce guitar solo and Partridge's frantic, shouted vocal pretty well absolves this, "Road Girdle the Globe")

This reissue provides remastered sound, presenting the album crisp and clean and allowing its textures to shine. It also adds three bonus tracks-- Moulding's goofy "Life Begins at the Hop" was one of the early songs with Dave Gregory and while structurally, it sounds more like the stuff on their earlier records, it maintains a sense of maturity in the vocals and the arrangements that allows it to sit comfortably alongside the best material on the album, although the other two bonus tracks aren't nearly as memorable (neither is particularly bad... kind of like much of the record).

All in all, "Drums and Wires" is a huge step forward and far and away the best thing XTC had done until now. They'd go on to bigger and better things as they became more overt about their love of '60s rock and psychedelia, but this one is worth investigating.