The Second Best Album Ever Made!
MR. PARTRIDGE "Take Away The Lure Of Salvage"
by Kevin Chanel
Sweating, slightly throbbing, clutching
a worked copy of Revolutionary Worker (a regional pinko subversive
paper), Yamaha guitar wobbling around his expanding frame, and
belting a tense chorus. That's the last image of XTC frontman
Andy Partridge that was to grace the concert stage. The year was
1982, and their English Settlement had just been released to a
(finally) adoring U.S. XTC's first show on this tour took place
in San Diego at the age-old California Theatre; one of those early
1900's movie houses that they just don't make anymore, yet every
old town has. By the end of their hour-plus set, half of the audience
was on the stage, frolicking about within an inch of the group.
This was the closest to a controlled anarchic display I had ever
seen from a devoted fan-base toward its icon, a major-label icon
at that.
My friends and I left that night to develop what we were certain to become cherished reminiscences for years to come. To this day several aspects of that night live strong within my nostalgic mind. They ended with the surprising "Outside World" that evening; one of their most outlandishly silly and fun tunes. All seemed right. Fun was had. The next day's news came to us as a bit of a shock.
Apparently Mr. Partridge had incurred some debilitating nervous breakdown in between the end of their San Diego show and the next night's engagement in Los Angeles. Frightened and paralysed, it came to be that the California Theatre was the last concert they would ever play.
In the following years Andy Partridge would claim stage fright as his crippling phobia. Much to his record labels' and p.r. folks' derision, XTC would never play live again, leaving San Diego as their final testament. San Diego?... Yeah, San Diego. Remember that next time someone wants a trivia answer involving Dan Fouts, PSA flight 182, Iron Butterfly and XTC.
As time went on I lost interest in the group. Their music gradually yet consciously extinguished the very spark that led me to them; wry wit gave way to biting sarcasm, catchy quirkiness mellowed to banal acousticism. Though they occasionally hit the mark with brilliant tunesmithery, more often than not they were just pansy-ass limey pussies, too scared to be a real band. They even parted with their expert drummer. Since they couldn't do what every other self-respecting group did, tour live, I had no use for them.
But looking back, there was a period well-defined as XTC's golden age. Between the clompy and awkward Go 2 and the pastoral (read: lame) English Settlement lay the group's defining twin-tomes, Drums And Wires and Black Sea. For myself, these records displayed the very essence of being young and intelligent, goofy and awkward; with an irrepressible energy that felt like Tasmanian devils trying to jump out of your skin on a moment's notice. Ahh, youth. All hormones and misplaced aggression, the songs from this era gave no remorse for bush league politicisms, half-baked social science and fuck-you-get-out-of-my-optimism.
It's a particular sidestep from this period that struck me
in my youthful exuberance as something completely original and
genius-like. Between the two albums Andy Partridge holed up
in a studio with former producer (and future studio-legend)
John Leckie, armed with the complete tapes from the Drums And
Wires sessions, and a few others from previous outings. Through
a kaleidoscopic jumble of the "deconstruction/reconstruction"
of existing XTC tracks, Mr. Partridge created an incredible
pastiche of new music. This he fittingly titled Take Away/The
Lure Of Salvage. It's one of the most brilliant albums ever
invented.
Aside from the essential shifting and reorganizing of the
original songs from which the listener had become accustomed,
Andy challenged and involved XTC fans on several higher levels.
Where the Drums And Wires album stood as a monument to the gawky
naivete and youthful playfulness of that age, Take Away...
at times portrayed the embedded adult nature within the tunes
themselves, not unlike how wunderkind hotshots might occasionally
display weltschmerz beyond their years. At other junctures the
album's many free-associated take-offs of existing tunes (namely
"The Rotary", which is "Helicopter" stripped down to the amplified
drum part with occasional bursts of the bass and guitar parts,
with an improvised vocal rant about an ersatz dance-craze) act
as a springboard from which "it can be surmised" the
direction of the tune would bounce if given a life of its own,
free from the constrictions of the conventional pop-song format....In
other spots, Partridge took direction from the implications
of the title of the songs. In the bombastic "Work Away Tokyo
Day", he combined scant few elements of the placid "Day In Day
Out" with nine saxophone parts from Go 2's "Red". Adding
a snappy little bass part to the speed up proceedings, the new
version altered the original's British workday drudgery theme
to create a sonic landscape for what Westerners would depict
as a typical morning on the Ginza. Like the aforementioned "The
Rotary", this reorganization works as an extension of the root's
core....Conversely, some tunes are disintegrated introspectively
in a minimalist design. From the powerful post-industrial highway
revisiting of the driving "Roads Girdle the Globe" we get the
somnambulistic meditation in the form of a haiku, "I Sit In
The Snow". Using very few elements from the tune, he wraps the
idea in a blanket much as a weary commuter would mantra-ize
on the dream of complete open-ness; virtually sitting one's
self in an flat open field, surrounded by nothing but white
powder as far as the eye can see. This piece works quite powerfully,
stealing the power from "Roads..." and shifting the focus from
the observational "autobahn" feel to the more personal examination
of perhaps the effects of the observations on one's psyche.
Uhh...yeah, sure....To further flog that horse, I use the example
of the tranquilizing and beautiful (and my personal favorite
song on the album) "Shore Leave Ornithology". Here Mr. Partridge
completely deflates the spastic and kinetic one-minute "Pulsing
Pulsing" (the throwaway b-side of the hit single "Making Plans
For Nigel"), and rebuilds it from the bass line outward as a
six-minute wide-parameter daydream. Within these sleepy parentheses
wander the melody to the Charlie Parker nugget "Ornithology",
the repeated/looped bass/kick/toms parts from "Pulsing Pulsing",
and the most gripping senseless open-end sax workout ever committed
to tape. On top (actually, weaving throughout) of all this is
a barely intelligible stream-of-consciousness track of Partridge-whispering,
which includes the sounds of pages turning and hot coffee being
sipped (from what sounds like a styrofoam cup). In my less-than-humble
opinion, this track is pure genius. From the juxtaposition of
a jazz standard to the cinematic verite style, "Shore Leave
Ornithology" works completely the opposite of its base tune.
A tune supreme, if you will.
To exclamate the document, Andy offers up the cathartic and amazing "New Broom". Wherein he toyed with the reshuffling of patterns and rhythms on the other cuts, he uses the coda of the album to both explain and deconstruct the novelty of the album. Utilizing polarized stereo bouncing for the percussion track and a completely sparse arrangement of occasional background sounds, Partridge powers the piece with the melody-less lyric describing the need for complete rethinking of personal and social order. His proclamation to "break all the deadlocks and spit out the beer" act, along with the oblique attack of the beat-track, as a broad-sweeping slate-clearer, complete with alternating mixed-metaphors and commercial sense-of-humor. It isn't until halfway through this seemingly harsh mantra that the true nature of the song's basis begins to unfold; it is a thorough inside-outing of their biggest hit to date - the snappy and bleak "Making Plans For Nigel". By gradually adding more of the original instrument sounds to the base mix, the song culminates in a barrage of its own pre-existing weight. Compounding the gravity of the original hit with the momentum of a plodding freight train.
As a complete document, Take Away... succeeds as a bold array of styles from an extremely talented artist being let loose from his usual constraints. Each song diverts from the previous in new and exciting ways, slapping the listener with fresh perspectives at each new angle. It's almost as though he's daring the die-hard XTC fan to remain loyal. "Are you sure you love our music?... How 'bout if we do this with it?... Still there?... Well how about this then?... Take that, quirky pop weasels!" Whether he's stripping the gears of "Heatwave" to create the fireless "The Day They Pulled The North Pole Down", or flipping "Reel By Real" over on its back like a helpless cockroach, Partridge throws roadblocks at the casual fans whilst issuing passports to the more daring connoisseur.
Repeated listenings since its 1980 release have only cemented my view of this album as a standard by which all other "dub"-style albums must be measured. By virtue of its dexterity and variety, Take Away/The Lure Of Salvage is not just the best XTC record, but one of the finest uses of studio recording in history.
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