Product Description

This album stands as an effective summation of the punky exuberance particular to a parcel of British bands that all ended up sailing across the ocean to America and were capturedunder the marketing flag of New Wave. XTC was one of the best of the lot and their continued artistic growth is testament to their devotion to music over punk ethos or the dictates of commerce. This 1978 album (which now also includes their 3-D EP from the previous year) is overflowing with hopped-up energy and wiseguy humor.
The songs are played like a building on fire by a quartet featuring the era's de rigeur instrumentation of guitar, Farfisa organ, bass and drums--seemingly with everything turned up in the mix! "This Is Pop","Do What You Do", "Statue of Liberty", "I'll Set Myself On Fire", "I'm Bugged", "Radios In Motion"--no look at the era would be complete without these songs. Hearing XTC's earliest work with the full knowledge of where they've gone since is both elucidating and entertaining.

Track Listing

1. Radios In Motion
2. Crosswires
3. This Is Pop
4. Do What You Do
5. Statue Of Liberty
6. All Along The Watchtower
7. Into The Atom Age
8. I'll Set Myself On Fire
9. I'm Bugged
10. New Town Animal In A Furnished Cage
11. Spinning Top
12. Neon Shuffle
13. Science Friction
14. She's So Square
15. Dance Band
16. Hang On To The Night
17. Heatwave
18. Traffic Light Rock
19. Instant Tunes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11915 in Music
• Released on: 2001-06-11
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Even if the throbbing "Radios In Motion" had its moments of teenage boredom-bashing new wave sloganeering ("All the kids are complaining that there's nowhere to go, all the kids are complaining that the songs are too slow"), White Music proves that XTC were always something more than bumpkin punks from greenest Wiltshire. For a start, Andy Partridge loved The Beatles--a sackable offence in those days--and as this 1978 debut album proves, XTC's spiky muse--spasmodic rhythms, Partridge's scuffed guitars, Colin Moulding's stuttering bass lines and Barry Andrew's spontaneous blurts of crocheting keyboards--was inalienably their own. Clearly more closely aligned to the likes of Wire, Devo and Talking Heads than to any of the big city bin liner and spittle brigade, White Music was adroitly experimental and as awkward as it was tetchy (as on "Crosswires", "I'm Bugged" and their spluttering dub version of Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower", which outshone the Clash's reggae efforts at this point) but was also plagued by crippling commercial misfortune. Probably Britain's unluckiest pop blighters ever, XTC's indecently stymied career path hit the first of many obstacles when the lyrics to the potentially classic pop single "Statue Of Liberty" ("In my fantasy I sail beneath your skirt") fell foul of the BBC's quasi-Victorian obscenity regulations and failed to chart through lack of airplay. --Kevin Maidment

Customer Reviews

Groundbreaking but erratic
'White Music' is one of the New Wave's fundamental 'class of 1977' albums and immediately established XTC as one of the era's 'bands most likely to'. At that time, anything that had a certain attitude and didn't sound as if it was influenced by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Yes or disco was labelled 'punk'. XTC were obviously a more than that, but as evidenced by the opening track, 'Radios In Motion', they played up to the link at first.

Andy Partridge's songwriting talents would develop rapidly over the next few years, but his potential was already clear on the outstanding, relatively mellow, 'Statue Of Liberty'. 'Into The Atom Age' is no less impressive, coloured by organ, as many of the early recordings were. This song reveals a discontented view of modern living which is confirmed by 'New Town Animal'. Colin Moulding was writing truly great songs for 'Drums And Wires' two years later, but there's little sign of that on 'White Music', with 'Set Myself On Fire' his best effort.

'White Music' has punk energy and ingenuity beyond that. It's also radical in the context of the time, but it hasn't aged well. The band's vision is in place here but crudely formed. An important milestone in music therefore but far outclassed by subsequent releases, something that the inclusion of seven extra tracks on the CD does little to remedy.

just buy the damn thing
Having listened to the latest bunch of pretenders to the new wave crown, e.g., hot hot heat, yeah yeah yeahs etc, the old stuff still beats them hands down. and none more so than this, xtc's first album. at times both experimental (cross wires, im bugged) or perfect pop (statue of liberty, radios in motion), this also boasts the stunning all along the watchtower cover. those who like slightly adroit, inventive, energetic new wave will love this; in my opinion only elvis costello's this year's model comes close. buy it!

What do you call that noise that you put on?
This is the exuberant and carefree side of early XTC, before the days of Steve Lillywhite, nervous breakdowns, Skylarking and divorce. White Music is an LP very much of its time; its main failings are that, stylistically, it occasionally sounds as if the band are trying too hard (or perhaps not hard enough), and it's also a little too knowingly 'clever' for its own good, but you can tell that they were heading in the right direction.

Words like spiky, angular and - >gulp< - quirky are invariably used to describe the band at this stage of their career, but they were always a pop band in essence. This is evinced by relatively-tuneful tracks such as Radios In Motion, Statue Of Liberty and (naturally) This Is Pop, which outweigh the more 'difficult' moments such as Colin Moulding's Cross Wires and the bizarre cover version of Dylan's All Along The Watchtower.

It took a further two LPs and a change of line-up before XTC honed their style into something that would crack the charts but the critical acclaim this album received, allied to their reputation as a fantastic live band, did them no real harm in the interim.