It's Never Easy To Change.

Not nearly enough good things have been said about "Apple Venus Volume 1" by XTC. This is simply some otherworldly shit. The music is staggeringly ambitious, the songs melodically brilliant and just a tiny bit astringent, and the production is just about the best I've ever heard. The way the record is mixed is a marvel in itself, weaving together instruments from different musical traditions into a seamless picture that is miraculously uncluttered. It sounds like "Pet Sounds" recorded in 2150 AD. It sounds as British and portentous as a Winston Churchill speech. It beguiles our inner Bronze Ager with the eldritch modalities of "Green Man" and "Harvest Festival". It draws from everything and nothing; Moulding's Cowardisms lighten Partridge's relentlessly ambitious orchestral neoformalism in time-honored XTC fashion.

Partly because of the cast of thousands on this record, there hovers about it a sense of endless mental honing followed by quick and succinct tracking dates. At least on the orchestral side. The formality is engaging; like a good play we sit in our seats and clap and gape at the amazing moments, responding for all the world like Paul McCartney's northern panto crowd in "Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band". And true to this conceit, many of the songs begin with a distinct sonic pulling-back-of-curtains. By little kids in costumes.

When we were children, Andy Partridge gave us the "rub" which made the standard 2 guitar/bass/drums arrangement reveal sonic possibilities that made us feel like Rock was just starting. Much like Brian Wilson before him, he put sounds together in ways that made new sounds. Now as we gray "Apple Venus Volume 1" presents the same concept, the same "rubs", but performed with orchestras. The transition from the tight, formal first chorus of "I Can't Own Her" into its refrain, replete with racing strings and flute, presents a rub of pure, intentional wrongness on the "resolution" of "...SWIRL-ing sky...". Yet the arrangement demands it; the return to the home key is an utter miracle. It is also an almost unneccesary display of mastery; picking up a new key would have been perfectly respectable.

Two songs later, we are again treated to perfect wrongness in the verse melody of "The Last Balloon". The angularity of the passage is augmented with austere harpsichord, the passing tones in the left hand moving in a most unlikely chromatic descent. "Harvest Festival" is a close cousin of "The Last Balloon", the intro done this time on a stately piano upon which a harmless I/VII/V is lent the fragility of dead leaves with a fourth slipped in under the first chord. This, of course, is resolved by a series of I/IV's in the tonic key of B before easing back into the home key with I (F#maj.) and its sere fourth. The unaccidental beauty of this presents itself in the fact the the original key, the first chord, the F# major/add B, is almost a B chord itself! Voiced F#, Bb (!) , B, C#. Why isn't it just a B chord? Well, that Bb ain't exactly at home in a B major triad, now is it? It's a major seventh, which very simply does NOT belong at this ball game. The 9nth? The C#? It isn't nearly as threatening a presence as the major seventh. It serves to turn the chord into a "cluster", giving us the major seventh, the root and the ninth close and cuddly.

But what would the progression be without adding the fourth to the F# chord? And how would we be anticipating that rise to the tonic resolution without it? So that when it comes we go from wondering why there is the sound of creaking chairs to standing under a tent on a field in the summer in the West Midlands in another century?

I'm pretty sure that in 200 years this work will rank with the greats of 20th century classical music.

Right now, though, it's obviously fucked.

I lost my autographed copy in San Francisco, Wayne Newton notwithstanding. It said "To Our Bob". I fucking love that so much. If I hadn't made 800 on that gig and gotten two nights with choclits on my pillow I would've slashed my wrists. Truly a sweet regret. The thing that kills me is that whoever found it was probably like "XT what?" and listened to it and thought it didn't sound like Black Eyed Peas at all. Probally flushed it with a Koran or two.

Let's start an island somewhere. We'll get Magic Alex to scout it with Mal. I just feel so close to all of you right now.