Search - XTC :: Drums & Wires

A revelation from Swindon

sich | NYC | 10/13/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's the summer of 1979. You've just graduated high school. You're eighteen and know everything about EVERYTHING, especially music. Then one day, quite by accident, you discover you don't know ANYTHING. It seems that somewhere in merry old England (the armpit of Swindon, I believe) a group of four very sharp young men have created something unlike anything you've ever heard before. Each cut on the album proves to be stranger, fresher, and more glorious than the last. In Roads Girdle the Globe, the guitars sound like steamrollers, the drums like jackhammers. In Millions, the band transports you to the exotic far East, dips you in the Yangtze, rinses years of radio pablum from your spongey little brain. All with guitars ad drums... like the Beatles' loopy cousins sending messages from a parallel universe... Drums and Wires is a freaking revelation. And you know what? Twenty-plus years later, it's still as fresh as the day it was released. It still beats the hell out of anything being recorded today. Drums and Wires is pure XTC. Buy this album, and play it LOUD."

The blossoming of XTC

Nathan M DeHoff | Absurd City | 05/24/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Sometimes, when I haven't listened to this album in a while, I forget how great it is. This is often regarded as the first "true" XTC album, as it begins to create the "Beatle-based pop" sound for which the band is now (somewhat) famous, rather than the organ-heavy pseudo-punk of the first two albums (which are also good, by the way). It kicks off with XTC's first hit single, "Making Plans For Nigel," followed by the frantic "Helicopter." Other highlights include the tongue-twisting "Outside World" (about not wanting to know what depressing things are going on in the world, a subject with which I can often identify), the cautionary fantasy (or mockery thereof, perhaps) of "Scissor Man," and the world-weary "Complicated Game." There are also odes to the overwhelming feeling of being in love ("When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty" and "Ten Feet Tall"), and social commentaries on such issues as factory work ("Day In Day Out"), lack of privacy ("Real By Reel"), and devotion to the automobile ("Roads Girdle The Globe"). A great aspect of this album is the way that the music fits the mood of each song. "Making Plans For Nigel" is mechanical; the whirring sounds of "Helicopter" bring an actual helicopter to mind; "Roads Girdle The Globe" is noisy and droning; and "Complicated Game" is delightfully paranoid. I wouldn't say this is XTC's best work (that would be Skylarking), but it is an all-around wonderful album."

This is where it started for me

Carl Mack | Palm Springs, CA United States | 05/17/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This was the first effort I ever heard by XTC. A local new-wave station was playing "Helicopter" and "Making Plans For Nigel" and I just had to have this. I was in no way disappointed. Still sounds fresh to me today. To me this was thier first great effort, with many more classics to come."