XTC Skylarking (2016 Steven Wilson Mix) 200g Import LP

The 1986 masterpiece Skylarking is an album unlike anything else in XTC's back catalogue. Produced by Todd Rundgren, dense orchestrations and a more organic soundscape were deployed in servicing some of the band's most melodically rich and sophisticated songs.

XTC's most commercially successful album was, for many years, also its most mythical with tales of "lost" multi-track tapes (sadly true of other XTC albums but not this one), and a song originally dropped from the album only to be replaced when it inadvertently became a hit single in the USA. A perfect match, on paper, between the ideal Britpop band a decade before the term was invented and an Anglophile super-producer that turned rather imperfect in personality terms but still resulted in a classic album.

Combining the charming pastoral feel of Mummer with the classicist English pop of The Big Express, XTC expand their signature sound by enhancing their intelligently melodic pop with graceful, lyrical arrangements and sweeping, detailed instrumentation. Moulding's songs complement Partridge's songs better than before, and each writer is at a melodic and lyrical peak, which Rundgren helps convey with his supple production. The result is a pop masterpiece — an album that has great ambitions and fulfills them with ease.