Fretplay.com XTC guitar tabs CD reviews Drums and Wires

XTC - Drums and Wires Audio CD

Band: XTC Title: Drums and Wires Rating: Release Date: 1991-03-19 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Making Plans for Nigel 2: Helicopter 3: Day In Day Out 4: When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty 5: Ten Feet Tall 6: Roads Girdle the Globe 7: Life Begins at the Hop 8: Chain of Command 9: Limelight 10: Real by Reel 11: Millions 12: That Is the Way 13: Outside World 14: Scissor Man 15: Complicated Game

This was to be their "breakthrough in the States", with young whiz kid Steve Lillywhite producing. Frankly I don't like this album as much as I do its two predecessors ("White Music" and "Go 2"), but it's a respectable effort and the beginning of the rest of XTC's career (two guitars, no Barry Andrews). Lillywhite cranks up the drums, as he later became famous for doing, and fails in my opinion to deliver as sparkling and true a sound as John Leckie had previously acheived. The fidelity here is quite good, I'm just saying that it represents the band's music less impressively than Leckie had in my opinion.

The band do at least one track here that tries to be poppy. "Ten Feet Tall" isn't far off the mark of Fleetwood Mac. (Seriously, try to imagine Christine McVie singing it). Not a bad song, but not something to really aspire to. Much of the other material is pretty adventurous though. The U. K. hit "Nigel" wears its Captain Beefheart influence proudly. "Millions" is a brilliant, beautiful soundscape (an impressionistic portrait of Asia, with wonderful guitars [i. e. "wires"] and drums). Songs like "Real by Reel" and "Roads Girdle the Globe" demonstrate the band's energy, flawed though they may be (like Elvis Costello's work from this time period, they don't add up to much coherent). Moulding's "That Is The Way" and "Day In, Day Out" are memorably lanquid.

The material tries for diversity, but it doesn't all work - particularly, Partridge occasionally gets too wordy and silly, as on "When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty". But it's a decent record by a band that was to become great.

Great album; not an essential, though
XTC is, in my opinion, the greatest band of all time. Let me get this out of the way first. All of their albums are great stuff, this included.

This is, however, one of the lesser of their albums. It was basically the last 70s punk/new-wave sounding album they had before they moved onto "Black Sea" and beyond. That being said, for their early sound, I'd rather turn to the edgier and more agressive "Go 2", the previous album.

Now for the positives. It features some great songwriting a year before the album that supposedly began their great songwriting era ("Black Sea"). I don't consider the album to be terribly consistent, but the good songs are really good, e. g. "When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty", "Making Plans for Nigel", and my personal guilty pleasure, "Scissor Man".

I'd reccomend this album, but make sure you get most of the other XTC albums first. If you have "Go 2", "Black Sea", "English Settlement", "Skylarking", "Nonsuch", and "Apple Venus" Vol. 1 and 2, then by all means get this. Its a missing piece in your collection. If you don't own any of the aforementioned albums, then perhaps you'd like to get them first, or at least the earlier works (they changed a lot moving into the mid 80s).

A revelation from Swindon
You've just graduated high school. It's the summer of 1979. You're eighteen and know everything about EVERYTHING, especially music. Then one day, quite by accident, you discover you don't know ANYTHING. It seems that somewhere in merry old England (the armpit of Swindon, I believe) a group of four very sharp young men have created something unlike anything you've ever heard before. Each cut on the album proves to be stranger, fresher, and more glorious than the last. In Roads Girdle the Globe, the guitars sound like steamrollers, the drums like jackhammers. In Millions, the band transports you to the exotic far East, dips you in the Yangtze, rinses years of radio pablum from your spongey little brain. All with guitars ad drums. . . like the Beatles' loopy cousins sending messages from a parallel universe. . . Drums and Wires is a freaking revelation. And you know what? Twenty-plus years later, it's still as fresh as the day it was released. It still beats the hell out of anything being recorded today. Drums and Wires is pure XTC. Buy this album, and play it LOUD.

The blossoming of XTC
This is often regarded as the first "true" XTC album, as it begins to create the "Beatle-based pop" sound for which the band is now (somewhat) famous, rather than the organ-heavy pseudo-punk of the first two albums (which are also good, by the way). Sometimes, when I haven't listened to this album in a while, I forget how great it is. It kicks off with XTC's first hit single, "Making Plans For Nigel," followed by the frantic "Helicopter. " Other highlights include the tongue-twisting "Outside World" (about not wanting to know what depressing things are going on in the world, a subject with which I can often identify), the cautionary fantasy (or mockery thereof, perhaps) of "Scissor Man," and the world-weary "Complicated Game. " There are also odes to the overwhelming feeling of being in love ("When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty" and "Ten Feet Tall"), and social commentaries on such issues as factory work ("Day In Day Out"), lack of privacy ("Real By Reel"), and devotion to the automobile ("Roads Girdle The Globe"). A great aspect of this album is the way that the music fits the mood of each song. "Making Plans For Nigel" is mechanical; the whirring sounds of "Helicopter" bring an actual helicopter to mind; "Roads Girdle The Globe" is noisy and droning; and "Complicated Game" is delightfully paranoid. I wouldn't say this is XTC's best work (that would be Skylarking), but it is an all-around wonderful album.

This is where it started for me
A local new-wave station was playing "Helicopter" and "Making Plans For Nigel" and I just had to have this. This was the first effort I ever heard by XTC. I was in no way disappointed. Still sounds fresh to me today. To me this was thier first great effort, with many more classics to come.

You can see a complete list of all XTC discography, or go back to the XTC tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.