XTC - Skylarking
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Free Music Notes for Skylarking
Free Music Review: A pop masterpiece worthy of all it's praise
Hit: 4 Stars
You can literally hear entire band's basing their sounds on concepts found on simply one of the many different styled tracks on the album (ex: Earn Enough For Us=post-Core STP).. One of the few albums that can hold a candle to the pop mastery and versatility demonstrated by The Beatles on their later work. To my ears, this even surpasses some of the regal pop masterpiece albums those godfathers released, taking pop music into a classier more eccentric and well constructed realm then anyone could have guessed. These are the types of albums that should be true mainstream classics, not the underground stapels they have become. Free Music Review: Definitive
Hit: 5 Stars
This is one of the best albums of the last 25 years and certainly one of the best I have ever heard. If you like good music like the Beatles, Kinks, Rolling Stones, Wilco, Fountains of Wayne, Beck, Coldplay, Prince, or Radiohead, then you will probably not be disappointed by this CD.Free Music Review: No impact
Hit: 2 Stars
I'll probably never run out of music to discover. It seems that no matter how many stones I turn, no matter how exhaustive my search is, there will always be atleast a few gems I'd somehow overlooked. For me, XTC are one of those gems. I picked up Black Sea at the local record shop and it completely knocked me out. Maybe it was those huge drums, or the way everything felt like it was pulling apart at the seams. Regardless of what it was, I had to have more. Over the course of the next few weeks I proceeded to buy Drums and Wire followed by English settlement. Again, both were completely stellar albums, especially D & W.
Then there was Skylarking. It was supposed to be THE XTC album, their masterpiece. People compared it to the likes of Pet sounds and proclaimed it one of the best albums of all time. I'm sad to say it didn't live up to the hype for me. In fact, I find it to be downright mediocre. For me this is where they dropped the ball and failed to pick it back up. I'll admit that I miss the more raw, punk like energy that was found in early XTC, but that's not why I dislike this album. I actually enjoy alot of mellow, lavishly produced music, but Skylarking just sounds...bland. None of the songs seem to stand out and the production is borderline soft rock. Every time I listen I hear less of what made me love XTC in the first place and more of why I can't stand Phil Colins. Even the songwriting itself is weak, lacking strong hooks and any sort of weight to help the music rise out of the syrupy muck that Todd Rundgren laid out. I just don't see what all the fuss is about.
Free Music Review: A Great Listen From Start To Finish
Hit: 5 Stars
What a difference the crisp and clear sounds make when a record you've heard on vinyl is remastered to compact disc. Yes, the sounds of the needle digging down on the vinyl grooves are lacking, but for an album that has been played over and over, it is a pleasure to hear, for the first time, on cd. XTC's finest album, SKYLARKING, is by far their best effort.
XTC carries a Sgt. Pepper influence with a little new age and jazz on SKYLARKING. This is the type of album that when you hear more than five tracks, you know you've got a winner on your hands. Thanks to Todd Rungren's production and XTC's love for Sixties pop, there are more than enough songs on this album that hum a memorable tune, such as "Earn Enough For Us", "Season Cycle", and "That's Really Super, Supergirl." Also, there are songs that will soothe the soul, "Ballet For a Rainy Day", "Another Satellite", and "Mermaid Smiled."
When SKYLARKING was released back in 1986 there was a bit of controversy over the song "Dear God". The song and video was banned from being shown on television for a short period because it appeared to possess blasphemous lyrics. Despite the sign of the times, the flurry of evangelicalism during the 1980s, the song is now interesting to hear some twenty years later and why the censorship?
The only flaw about having the cd is the artwork and the printed lyrics for the album. Unfortunately, one needs a magnifying glass to read the exceptional songwriting of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding. Otherwise, enjoy these great tunes.
Free Music Review: Not Music For the Masses
Hit: 5 Stars
XTC put this out and it was unlike anything else out at that particular point in time. Who would have thought in 1986 that a former punk/new wave band would release an album that had more to do with the Beach Boys than anything close to what their other contemporaries were putting out at the time? What was created was an atmospheric masterpiece that has stood the test of time for 20 years. I guess the figured that since going all noisy on the rock oriented "Big Express" didn't translate into bigger record sales they would stay true to their art. Thank goodness they did.