XTC - DRUMS AND WIRES @ 45

Released on August 17th, 1979, the third LP from XTC, Drums and Wires, turns 45 years old today. The album marked the band's turn away from their experimental leanings into a more accessible pop disposition, giving them their first proper commercial breakthrough. It was their first album after the departure of keyboardist Barry Andrews, who would go on to co-found the successful mutant funk group, Shriekback. His replacement, guitarist Dave Gregory, would help inspire the album's title as the band's sound shifted to emphasize guitars over keyboards, hence the "wires" reference. As for the "drums" aspect, this came down to the group recording in Virgin's newly opened Town House studios, with producer Steve Lillywhite beginning to developing the gated reverb effect that would give the drums their heft and impact. The studio featured the infamous "stone room", which would play a huge part in Public Image Ltd developing their own thunderous and influential drum sound on their Flowers of Romance LP in 1981.

Prior to working on the album, Lillywhite helped produce the breakthrough single, Life Begins at the Hop, which helped set the course for the album to come. The follow-up, Making Plans for Nigel, would solidify the band's trajectory into the upper reaches of the charts, establishing Andy Partridge as a songwriter of significant talents. he would pen the bulk of the songs for the album. While the group was refining their sound into a more radio friendly variant, they were maintaining enough edge to keep themselves in the forefront of the "new wave" and "post-punk" edges of the alternative music scenes. The album's closing track, Complicated Game, in particular, offered one of the group's most intense performances, particularly considering the vocal from leader Andy Partridge literally blew his vocal chords by the end of the song, achieving one of the most self-destructive vocals since John Lennon ripped his voice to shreds on Twist & Shout. Needless to say, the vocal was done in one take.

The strikingly iconic cover graphics were initially conceived by Partridge, who recalls their development: "I quite liked the idea of the letters, the X - T and C, and the little underline actually making the features of a face. And I did a rough version, and we were in the studio and I didn't have time to do any finished artwork. And we got together with a girl, I think she was working at Design Clinic [Virgin's art department] at the time, who did a lot of our sleeves. And I ... said, "Okay - here's the sketch. I want it done in real primary colours. And then the back I want done in more muted kind of khakis and browns. But on the front I want really, really bright primaries." And she took away this sketch and I think she just cut it out of coloured paper or something, originally. And reproduced this little sketch in terms of just these big bright flashes." The 'girl' in question was Jill Mumford, who had also designed the cover for Siouxsie and the Banshees' The Scream, an album that also inspired the selection of Lillywhite as producer.

Drums and Wires would be the first album by the band released in the US market. While it only grazed the bottom of the top 200 in the US, it soared to #2 in Canada, and was also very popular in Australia and throughout western Europe. In the UK, the album peaked at #37, making it their biggest seller up to that point. The critics were fairly unanimous in their praise of the album, NME's Paul Morley decreed that XTC were "doing all sorts of they've never done before and never hinted they would. ... They have moved many steps forward to making a rock classic." In Billboard, the album was deemed "an interesting package from a label that's beginning to make headway in the U.S. It's fresh rock 'n' roll in a new wave vein with a dash of '60s English melody. Of particular note is the inventive mix as instruments sparkle in both left and right channels." The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote: "My reservations about this tuneful but wilfully eccentric pop are ideological. ... Partridge and Colin Moulding are moving toward a great art-pop mean that will set standards for the genre. Catchy, funny, interesting—and it rocks."

I was one of those Canadian kids who helped push the album to the top of the charts in the "Great White North". I saw a video for Making Plans for Nigel, and its syncopated drumming shudder, couple with the authoritarian dystopian lyrics, intrigued me, and then the striking cover graphics had an instant appeal for me to want to pick it up. That closing with Complicated Game was the most impressive moment for me, capturing the sense of helpless hopelessness a teenage aspiring punk working at Burger King could clearly identify with, humming the tune while flipping burgers. It doesn't matter where that burger goes, after all...