XTC
Mummer

There is a varied mythology about the short-lived live activity of XTC. Before Andy Partridge's stage-fright, before the various nervous breakdowns and collapses. Curious little stories that would make the fortune of many comedians at Zelig and similar nonsense. Five hellish years on the road until '82, during which they played practically everywhere in the UK: dives and wicked places, with starvation wages and an at best tolerant audience like that of Bob's Country Bunker in "The Blues Brothers".

During the '79 tour in Germany, in Wissenhoe, the Swindon band lost their musical instruments truck and were forced to play with "..two guitars from Postal Market and a toy drum set.."(!). In Caracas (not exactly the Eldorado of Rock), Venezuela, the police climbed on stage and clubbed around a bit, while the chairs in the hall burned sadly. Even the Peninsula managed to give its glorious contribution to the concert odyssey of the four traumatized British pop-rockers. So spoke an increasingly disturbed Partridge: "..It was March '78, we had a contract for some concerts near Genoa. But Aldo Moro was assassinated and for public order reasons the shows were suspended. Everyone abandoned us and, without a cent, we ended up in a hotel for the disabled on the Riviera, where they gave us mush for the elderly with chewing problems..".

After this amusing skit in the pizza country, XTC would return to Italy, and then they would say a final goodbye to on-stage performances (tour of "English Settlement", fateful night in Los Angeles, final anxious collapse of the usual Andy). And we arrive at 1983. The year of Falcao and Liedholm's championship. Of the first Craxi government composed of the infamous "pentapartito". The year of "Bianca". The year of the bucolic reflection of "Mummer". The successor of the magnificent "English Settlement" took its title from a funny Anglo-Saxon tradition (going around the neighborhood at Christmas dressed in paper clothes), but the original album artwork was scholastically "purged" by Virgin. Who immediately imposed a catchy 45 to be used in the charts, and Partridge quickly came up with the baroque-psychotic pop of "Great Fire".

"Mummer" was intended to represent a return to the pastoral calm of the English countryside, sublimated in the acoustic gallop of "Love On A Farm Boy's Wages", and the rational detachment from urban neuroses. Preserving oneself in nature, above all. Peace of mind. Isolating from the noises of the barbaric city. Cultivating the garden and a little bit of oneself. Gardens, flowers, and plants were the new obsession of the leader maximo Andy. Too bad that, despite the rather relaxed atmosphere of the record, things went differently. Already the sessions in the winter of 1982-'83, at the Manor castle (Oxfordshire), were quite problematic. Partridge, Moulding, and Dave Gregory, reduced to a trio after Terry Chambers fled to Australia, first recruited a new drummer, former Glitter Band Peter Phipps. Finally, the thorny "producer" question, a specialty of the house in terms of quarrels: until spring, Steve Nye, Bob Sargeant, Alex Sadkin, and Phil Thornalley took turns at the mixer. In short, it's like the unlucky coach struggling for salvation in the Italian Serie A.

"Mummer" however retains all the art, and the wonder, of XTC's playing in the recording studio. For instance, here the Beatlesque echo in the arrangements is no longer a simple whisper, it screams out loud: the initial "Beating Of Hearts" simulates a psychedelic, exotic, and indeed sgt.pepper-like zither in the distorted sound of two 12-string guitars. "Wonderland", written and sung by the good Colin Moulding, is pure pop drawn with soft keyboards, crickets, and Disney-like birds. Elsewhere the stylistic signature of "Mummer" is a pagan ritual of light and contemplation. Restless and minimal in "Human Alchemy", arcane in the tribal choruses of "Deliver Us From The Elements", hypnotic in the disjointed progression of "Me And The Wind". Then "Ladybird". A precious gem, a nocturnal and platonic invocation, a jazzed-pop of infinite class. In the CD reissue, among the bonus tracks stand the timburton-like instrumental "Frost Circus", the horns of the bouncing "Gold", and "Desert Island".

Following "Mummer" will be the locomotive of "The Big Express", the carnival-amaro of the Dukes Of Stratosphear, and the masterpiece "Skylarking" with the loved/hated Todd Rundgren. Other stories. The times of the mush for toothless elders on the Ligurian Riviera were now a vague memory.