This was in interesting inclusion. I’d ear-marked the XTC side project, The Dukes of Stratosphear, for inclusion in my Bonus round and I wondered if this album might supercede it.
It’s Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding in psychedelia mode, evidently drawing on the same inspirations that they used for Dukes, but here they don’t go for the full-on recreation. You’ll hear elements of Syd Barrett (especially the clockwork backing track for The Meeting Place) and Beach Boys (Season Cycle) but largely Beatles in their era between Sergeant Pepper and The White Album.
The album is a loose song-cycle concept album about life, beginning with lazy summer days and young love (on headphones, the opening track Summer’s Cauldron has some glorious ambient sounds of birdsong, a buzzing insect pans across from right to left). The music is light and evocative of endless summer days where everything seems possible.
It moves into more troubled times with A Ballet For A Rainy Day and 1000 Umbrellas, where stormy weather mirrors storms in relationships. There is a wedding – Big Day – and worries about money and growing family – Earn Enough For Us and Another Satellite. Near the end of the album we get musings on death (Dying) and an ironic prayer in the track Dear God (which I think I’ve heard before) - “But all the people that you made in your image, see them starving on their feet, 'cause they don't get enough to eat from God”. The album ends with Sacrificial Bonfire, a return to the lightness and delicacy of before, musing that all things are a cycle.
It’s a lot more mellow in feeling than XTC offerings like Making Plans For Nigel, Senses Working Overtime, or Mayor Of Simpleton, and to be honest I found it simply gorgeous. It felt like a return to, say SF Sorrow by The Pretty Things or similar late Sixties conceptual albums, but with a more modern sensibility and sound to it.
The production was apparently a fraught affair – Todd Rundgren had been brought in to produce and there was friction between him and Partridge. Given how Rundgren basically did everything all by himself on his solo albums, I can see him being a massive control freak about things. As with a lot of these albums where the creation was a nightmare, the result is a dream.
I’m going to keep the Dukes of Stratosphear for the bonus round, though, because thankfully it’s still quite different to this album.
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