INTERVIEW: XTC's Andy Partridge
- Joe Silva
If you thumb through the ultra-fannish, low profile XTC biography ("Chalkhills and Children"), you can see pictures of a slim Andy Partridge banging on a guitar in CBGB's with a severe haircut and a snarl to match. It was not too long after the punk heyday, and XTC were one of those imported fringe bands, generally known only to college radio programmers and indie/"New wave" shoppers. The alternative playing field was more or less level then, and XTC had as much of a chance of becoming huge as The Police did (check out the period film "Urgh! A Musical War" to see Partridge and Sting sharing the stage with a score of other hopefuls...). But things went awry when Andy's anxiety attacks over performing caused most label and radio support to melt away under the band's feet. Ridiculously perfect albums like "English Settlement" were have been left to stand idle like one of Britain's stone circles - awe inspiring, but only frequented by the odd tourist, historian, or pagan devotee.
Now, as XTC come close to rounding off their second decade as a unit, Partridge has strayed along with "ambient" icon Harold Budd into somewhat foreign territory. Through The Hill (Gyroscope/Caroline) is their mutual soundscape for a envisioned archaeological adventure that sets out to give the listener an aural vista of the imaginary underground treasures they would unearth.
About a year before their collaboration, both Partridge and Budd saw a television documentary about New York's Coney Island that coincidentally featured sonic backdrops by each of them. While not knowing who the other composer was at the time, they each made mental notes about how the pieces nicely complimented each others. Sometime later, during a vacation/promo trip to Japan, a rather "boozy" Partridge was approached by a mutual associate about a team-up. Months later Budd's label shipped over a few of his albums for Andy to investigate and although he was initially enthused about the project, he became slightly put off.
"I thought 'This is perfect as it is. There's nothing I can contribute to this.'" Partridge says, baking apparently from the English summer heat that's beset his Swindon home. "It really was [perfect]. It just existed. His music has this framework kind of like Swiss cheese, all held together with holes. I was kind of fearful of treading in those holes and spoiling the whole delicate weave."
But Andy wound up inviting Budd over to test the waters and after an afternoon's worth of "...giving each other goose bumps up and down the back of the neck all afternoon...," they decided the marriage would work. Over two weeks, they worked in tandem through long bouts of improvisation, switching instruments and tacking up swatches of music to the ideas for titles they'd come up with before they'd began. They'd sniff out different notions, chucking out what wasn't working and pursuing whatever line might seem to bring them to bring them the particular sort of "alchemy" they sought.
"It's totally different from writing a song." he adds "Sometimes [we'd have] a springboard theme, a little motif like 'dum dum da dee dum' or it would be just a chord change. And if it didn't work we'd take a break and wipe that and go back or change over instrumentation and try something different. You would sit down and say 'What is this about? I'm sitting down and designing a picture in my head that's hopefully not a million miles away from the picture in Harold's head.' If I play the picture in my head and he plays the picture in his, we should get this sort of stereoscopic image working somehow."
What seemed to worry Andy most wasn't that he might be stepping out of his element however, rather that he'd be tagged a bandwagon jumper, trying to get in on ambient's hazy, ethereal coattails.
"Not that that would hurt me, because we did have a branch of experimental, purely musical things early in the XTC career. It was a branch shaped like the Dub records I did or the "Homo Safari" experiments or odd bits and pieces that were usually studio down time or cheap studio time. There was no pressure for it to be a song. But that kind of branch seemed to wither and die off in me as I got more and more seduced by song writing. For me, this was just a return to that sort of feel."
Through The Hill ambles between being lush and spare and both at the same time. Taken in bits, the music might seem somewhat faceless, but that would only be because the underlying current of the album has been severed. The bonds between the pieces, though stretched gossamer thin, are always in evidence. In the end, the tones match up. What's most comforting about Through The Hill on a collaborative level, is that we don't see Partridge playing at being a faux-Eno or Budd as a quasi-quirky pop star. The two aren't caught here bowing respectively to each other realms, but rather choosing instead to distill the tendencies of one another, building an aura that reflects both sensibilities. Certain moments, like the first of the four interludes ("Hand 19, 20, 21, and 22") which is the album's opener, might buzz a bit more Andy than Harold, but on the whole neither personality idles at the surface of the music for very long. Even when Harold winds up in the seemingly dominant role by adding his voice to "Well for the Sweat of the Moon" and "Bronze Coins Showing Genitals," the spoken words are another moment of mutuality because the poetry is so obviously Andy's ("Frozen at the moment of nervous becoming/Smooth as toffee/The jackass dourly dances forever across their table end").
"'Well...' was an extract from a love letter and 'Bronze Coins...' was sort of pieces out of a longer poem reshuffled and edited somewhat. I just sometimes write and I don't know where I'm going. Most of it is painfully shitty, but sometimes I go back to it and think 'My God I would have never blundered into that neighborhood unless I would have wandered with a pen and got lost.' I wrote them for Harold because he's got just such an excellent speaking voice. I really like the timbre of his voice. I mean he's missed vocation, he should be selling aftershave and stuff with a voice like that."
Sometimes these moments of lyricism ricochet back into XTC couplets ("Summer's Cauldron," "Desert Island") and listening through the some of the notions, musical and otherwise, that crop up on Through The Hill, the devout might begin to wonder what resonance the experience might have on the trio's upcoming effort. Partridge has already made claims that it will be largely an "orchestral" work sans a drummer this time. Guitarist Dave Gregory has been doing string arrangements now that he's parted company from Aimee Mann's touring band while bassist Colin Moulding is said to be tending to his lawn. So, what pours forth from the band might indeed lean somewhat towards the pastoral.
And lastly, for those who haven't laid eyes on the band since they walked off the Letterman stage during the "Oranges and Lemons" radio/TV tour, the wait will probably continue. A possible pay-per-view, done up in an intimate surrounding, is apparently squashed as Geffen wanted to turn the event into a stadium sized Mick n' Keef comeback. Geffen's lack of sensitivity about the project are probably indicative once again of how and why XTC might not see a resurgence in a brash, MTV-driven world that will give any permutation of Neil Young (with or without the Pearl Jam) some elbow room and airtime.
"They were just trying to steer it into this very unsympathetic area", Partridge says mulling over the label's bent motives "We're a delicate little orchid y'know. You can't just stick us in gravel, turn the halogen lamp on and expect us to sprout."
