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60: XTC
Towers Of London/
Set Myself On Fire (live)/
Battery Brides (live)/
Scissor Man (live) (Virgin, 1980)

WHEN XTC released the Black Sea album in 1980, I remember thinking that it was the Revolver of its generation.

I have never had cause to revise that opinion either. It is a guitar album of staggering accomplishment and enormous ambition, up there with Marquee Moon in terms of rewriting the rules regarding two guitars, a bass and a drum kit, then applying heart paddles hooked up to a nuclear reactor.

XTC were a bold proposition in 1980, with their star firmly in the ascendant. The double-single release of Towers Of London boasts three live tracks as its B-sides, proving categorically what a thrilling, capable and adventurous outfit they were "in the flesh".

No one could have known at that point that XTC's touring days were destined to be over within two years, curtailed by Andy Partridge's dreadful, debilitating stage fright...

As much as Towers Of London itself was a love letter to the old architecture of the capital, it was also effectively a robust paean to the dignity of labour, a tip of the hat to a long-vanished workforce:

"Fog is the sweat of the never never navvies who pound
spikes in the rails to their very own heaven."

Drummer Terry Chambers underscores the song's weighty trudge by striking an anvil on the off-beat, and Dave Gregory peels off an immaculately succint melody-referencing solo. Colin Moulding's thoughtful, minimal bassline, meanwhile, proves to be a surprisingly propulsive engine over the resolute strum of Partridge's acoustic guitar.

Nothing crowds anything else, and all the pieces dovetail with an appropriately craftsmanlike skill. XTC repeated this feat time and again throughout Black Sea (and indeed their entire career, but that's another story), and if I'm honest I had the very devil of a job nominating this single over the equally deserving Respectable Street, Generals And Majors and Sgt Rock, all of which were also pulled from the album.

Did pop music ever again combine such childlike delight with such grown-up attributes, if it wasn't in XTC's hands? I honestly couldn't say.

10:33am Friday 14th March 2008

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