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Rating: 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.
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
01 Beating of Hearts (04:00)
Do you know what noise awakes you
Every morning from your bed
A-coming from the farthest hillside
A-coming from inside your head
You have heard
You have heard the loudest sound
In this and every world you can think of
Chorus: Louder than tanks on the highway
Louder than bombers in flight
Louder than noises of hatred
Dancing us from darkest night is the rhythm of love
Powered on the the beating of hearts
And did you know you had this power?
Drumming on it always stays
Never try to use it badly
Tunes of good are all it plays
You have heard
You have heard the loudest sound
In this and every world you can visit
Chorus
For a heart without love is a song with no words
And a tune to which no-one is listening
So your heart must give love and you'll find that
You shine like rain on the leaves you'll be glistening
You have heard
You have heard the loudest sound
In this and every world you can think of
Louder than thoughts of dictators
Louder than rattling swords
Louder than loading of rifles
Louder than screaming warlords
Chorus
02 Wonderland (04:54)
Can't you see
Love and affection
When it's put
In you direction
Wrapped in your mysterious wonderland
No fast car
Can make you grow up
Gentlemen
You think you've sewn up
Locked in your wonderful wonderland
No dark horse like me can cramp all of your style
Too plain and simple I am for your file
Chorus: One day you will break out of your spell
And some day you will want me for your own
And I'll say welcome to reality
All this talk
Of late-night parties
Flirting with the lower gentry
Lost in your magical wonderland
Out of depth
Out of class
Phase of your life
Will come to pass
Caught in this tragical wonderland
All of the riches that shine will turn sour
Each moment you slip you will bring near the hour
Chorus
Wrapped in your mysterious wonderland
Caught in your superficial
Nonexistant
Fairy-story
Wonderland
04 Great Fire (03:48)
Great fire burning
You supplied the spark
Fires burning spreading through the ark
Animals are panicking
I'm animal and panicking
Your glance a match on the tinderwood
You never spoke but I understood
Bring water
Eyes bring water
Chorus: Great fire burning through
Great fire burning through my house
Great fire burning through my house and heart
Great fire burning
All because of you
Fires burning spreading through the zoo
Animals are panicking
I'm animal and panicking
No round of drinks can extinguish this
Feeling of love and engulfing bliss
Bring water
Eyes bring water
Chorus
I've been in love before
But it's never been as hot as this
Smoke curling round the door
Memories of old loves crack and blister
Mister fireman bet you couldn't put me out if you tried
Your glance a match on the tinderwood
You never spoke but I understood
Bring water
Eyes bring water
Chorus
06 Human Alchemy (05:11)
An alchemy, human alchemy
We stole them from their freedom to be sold
To turn their skins of black into the skins
Of brightest gold
An alchemy , human alchemy
We stoked the fires of trade with human coals
And made our purses from the flailed skins of
Purest souls
An alchemy , human alchemy
Other lands became a larder full of all the good things
All we had to do was go and take
Blood the colour rain that grew our wicked harvest
Black the colour icing on our cake
An alchemy , human alchemy
We stole their babes and mothers, chiefs and braves
Although we held the whip, you knew we were
The real slaves
To alchemy , human alchemy
alchemy , human alchemy
07 Ladybird (04:33)
O ladybird
I have heard you wish to walk me through your garden
I crave your pardon if I woke you with my thinking
Ladybird
O ladybird
I have heard you wish to walk me through your meadow
You'll spread no wings to fly in fright if I'm beside you
Ladybird
All through the winter time
When wood was warm and splintered
Time seemed longer than a goods train
Now that spring is back again I'll ask your name
Your name
O ladybird
I have heard you wish to walk across my pillow
No weeping willow was ever as beautiful, sad as you are
Ladybird
And as you're walking past
I'm laying on the grass and making chains of thought
To snare you with my wit
But bit by bit you fade to gone
Gone
All through the iron season
Love was hanged and treason became
Something of a parlour game
Now sun is back in power I'll ask your name
Your name
O ladybird
I have heard you have to run to tend your children
No flood can drown nor fire blacken purest longing
For ladybird
Ladybird
09 Me and the Wind (04:18)
Me and the wind are celebrating your loss
Me and the wind are pulling kites and pushing tress
Me and the wind are celebrating your loss
Me and the wind are feeling freer than air should ever be
Should ever be should ever be should ever
And when you lured me into your syrup
All I could think of was what a lovely way for me to go
I never really realised that
Just like the struggling summer flies that
I was drowning no matter how sweet or how slow
Have I been such a fool
Have I been sitting on your stool
While you cracked the whip
While you cracked the whip
I danced imprisoned in your drumbeat
Your tune of spring had me whirling like a mad march
Merry hare
It never really came to mind that
The strings of your instrument were strangling me
Inside their snare
Have I been such a fool
Have I been sitting on your stool
While you held the hoop
While you held the hoop
Now that I'm out and I'm shouting in doorways
Freed from a love more like murder
I should be singing but in liberation
Feel like a ship with no rudder
Me and the wind are celebrating your loss
Have I been such a fool
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