Black Sea
	Produced by Steve Lillywhite
	Released on September 12, 1980
	UK CHART POSITION #16 . . . US CHART POSITION #41
	Find it at GEMM
GHS 4035 cover [high resolution scan]

T he dense, difficult, beautifully baroque fourth album. Black Sea was the first XTC album I ever owned, “Respectable Street” the second XTC song I ever heard (Nigel being the first), and from the moment that needle hit the old Victrola it was love pure love. Now, I was reading on the SwindonWeb that English Settlement is the avowed masterpiece and I have to disagree. For me, it’s always been about Black Sea. Drums and Wires let the pop monkeys come tumbling out of the barrel, Black Sea trained them to sit up straight and do tricks, while Settlement found them overeducated and prone to idle, rustic reverie. Their most ambitious and overtly political album to date, Black Sea demanded to be taken seriously. Andy Partridge takes aim at society (“Respectable Street”), religion (“Paper And Iron”) and politics (“Living Through Another Cuba”). Love, the noble sentiment, is again roughly handled with the destructive imagery begun with Drums; love is a battle, a rocket, a fire, a suffocation. Behind these images is a rich musical backdrop of angry guitars, electronic buzzing and tribal drumming from Martin Chambers that ratchets up the intensity. It’s a more complicated record than Drums by design, as if Partridge felt their last album made too many concessions to pop. Moulding apparently had no such qualms, following in Drums’ step with “Love At First Sight” and “Generals And Majors.” What endears Black Sea to me is the sense that XTC has at last inherited pop’s sharp sword of social justice, unflinching intelligence, resolute idealism (et cetera’d to an infinity of increasingly tiny words) wielded so well by The Beatles and The Kinks. And so, on Black Sea, I saw the old colors flying on a new craft and realized I might be rescued from the radio waves after all. Ahem. And now for the dull details about the bonus tracks. They are three, unvarnished unfortunately, and belong at the bottom of Black Sea, not in the middle.

GEFD-24376 cover [high resolution scan]	GEFD-24376 back sleeve

TRACK LISTING

1. RESPECTABLE STREET    3:37
2. GENERALS AND MAJORS    (Colin Moulding)    4:04
3. LIVING THROUGH ANOTHER CUBA    4:45
4. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT    (Colin Moulding)    3:06
5. ROCKET FROM A BOTTLE    3:30
6. NO LANGUAGE IN OUR LUNGS    4:52
7. TOWERS OF LONDON    5:24
8. PAPER AND IRON (NOTES AND COINS)    4:14
9. BURNING WITH OPTIMISM'S FLAMES    4:15
10. SGT. ROCK (IS GOING TO HELP ME)    3:56
11. TRAVELS IN NIHILON    6:56
    
    CD reissue bonus tracks (which appear between tracks 6 and 7 above)
    
12. SMOKELESS ZONE    (Colin Moulding)    3:53
13. DON'T LOSE YOUR TEMPER    2:37
14. THE SOMNAMBULIST    4:37
    
    All songs written by Andy Partridge unless noted

CREDITS

TERRY CHAMBERS --
DAVE GREGORY --
COLIN MOULDING --
ANDY PARTRIDGE -- producer (14)
Hugh Padgham -- engineer
Laurence Burrage -- engineer (14)

return to XTC discography

For more discographies visit...

© 2007 Connolly & Company. All rights reserved.