[Programming note: I have this column, which would normally be on Saturday, going up on a Thursday, only because I have some other time-sensitive material being published on Saturday. Not that any of this matters, but I thought I should write this note anyway.]
I suppose the charitable read on such a band as XTC and such an album as Skylarking is that this music is stately British pop, with a gentle pastoral feel. The pessimistic read, and possibly the realistic one, is that this is old man British music for pussies. I feel like every time I deign to check out an "underrated" British rock band from the late-'70s and/or 1980s, I'm always disappointed by how lame this shit is.
It's possibly a cultural thing. I feel the exact same way about this niche genre that I do about '00s British comedies (Peep Show, IT Crowd, The Office). I just don't get it. I can vibe with some of it, but overall, it kinda just makes me cringe.
Andy Partridge, the frontman for XTC, is fine. He has a soothing baritone, and does what he can with it. Mainly, he just sounds dorky. The music doesn't help. It comes off like the shit that a young Brit's parents would approve of while he's in the mud with dirty, grimy punk rock.
I'm struggling on how to describe it any more specifically than that, so maybe just skip ahead and check out a few tracks below. As is often the case, maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe XTC pitched me the wrong album in their discography—this is ninth out of fourteen album for them. Wikipedia says they are now regarded as one of the forefathers of post-punk; I'm not getting that from Skylarking at all. I can't imagine any post-punk band listening to this shit and saying "we should do that."
So I don't know, man. I don't know what to make of this one, except to throw it onto the rather large pile of "British pop culture that completely misses the mark for me" and maybe return to it at a later date? All I know is that I want to stop listening to it right now. So, so lame.
A terrible, sophomoric, and lazy conclusion for a blog post, I know! Sorry! Come back tomorrow!
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