My Top 20 albums 1980 No 7

BLACK SEA ****1/2
Genre: Rock Style: New Wave
Respectable Street 3:37
Generals And Majors 4:04
Living Through Another Cuba 4:45
Love At First Sight 3:06
Rocket From A Bottle 3:30
No Language In Our Lungs 4:52
Towers Of London 5:24
Paper And Iron (Notes And Coins) 4:14
Burning With Optimism's Flame 4:15
Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me) 3:56
Travels In Nihilon 6:56
Gotta love the absolutely symbolic way the album begins. Instead of something jerky and quirky you'd expect to hear, the first thing to hit (or, rather, to softly tinkle) your eardrums is a minimalistic piano melody with Partridge humming a few lines in exactly the same way you would think Paul McCartney initiated a piano demo of some future megahit. Of course, in just a matter of seconds 'Respectable Street' does transform into something jerky and quirky, a catchy, well-harmonized, New Wave-encrusted, Elvis Costello-blessed pop-rocker, but the damage has been done, want it or not. This is no longer the technophilian nerdy XTC of yore. From now on, XTC doesn't just want to be 'odd', it wants to add substance to style, even if that means discarding some of the style.
There are no weak spots on the album; Partridge and Moulding unleash all of their composing forces, heretofore obscured by misguided misunderstandings of the true charms of post-modernism like 'All Along The Watchtower' or intentional uglinesses like 'Complicated Game', and although I do think a couple of the tracks could have been moulded in the old style just for diversity's sake, that's a minor complaint. It is also said that Black Sea was the closest the band ever came to capturing their live style on record, but I can only understand that if it means there weren't too many overdubs on the record. Whatever. It's just a bunch of very good pop songs, often marked by Partridge's pedantism and "way too much intelligence" - meaning this is a record for your brain rather than your soul, but hey, that's XTC for you. It's not the friggin' Beatles.
The songs? 'Generals And Majors', with wonderful whistling and Britpop rhythms. The song's biggest hook? The soft near-falsetto hush of "generals and majors everywhere!" in direct counterpoint to the shrill "calling generals and majors!" It's easily the smoothest-running XTC song so far, and if you ever have any urges to be a pop genius, you gotta have smooth running songs, you know, when the verse melody starts off in a good way, then develops into something unpredictable, then manages to come back again to a natural conclusion in a perfectly natural way. 'Generals And Majors' is up there with the best. 'Living Through Another Cuba' is probably not, but it's still a pretty hilarious exploration of Latin rhythms in a lyrical setting that equates the current political situation of the Cold War to the Cuban missile crisis of 1961. Other bands would pretty much make the lyrics the focal point of the song, but not XTC - for them, it's the ridiculously loud rhythm section (percussion particularly), the scraping minimalistic guitar riff akin to the kind of riffs Tom Waits would love, and the unpredictable emphasis on 'BA!' in the chanted refrain. And the extended coda to the song, of course, when the political message is no more but the chorus still lives on.
Other highlights would be, for instance, 'No Language In Our Lungs', where the guitar sound is for the first time entirely ripped off the Beatles circa Abbey Road - but in a creative way, with an obligatory twist like a time signature rupture in the middle of the verses. Or maybe it would be 'Towers Of London', although that one is a bit lazy on the move, just plodding along like another Beatles rip-off but nowhere near as cool guitar-wise. Still a good song when you get used to it, and the chorus is nice to sing along to - 'towers of London, when they have built you, did you watch over the men who fell?' Or maybe it would be 'Paper And Iron', which eschewes Beatlesque imitations in favour of a more direct New Wave pop sound this time. Or the lyrics-heavy 'Burning With Optimism's Flames'. Or the almost bubblegummy 'Sgt Rock (Is Going To Help Me)', with the immortal line 'if I could only be tough like him, then I could win my own small battle of sexes'. Seriously, that song almost sounds like the Monkees. It's hilarious.
Anyway, like I said, the songs are all good. I wouldn't even want to criticize the seven-minute long sci-fi epic 'Travels In Nihilon', because weird and psychotic as it is, it still beats the hell out of 'Complicated Game'. Instead of wild uncontrolled - and ultimately dumb - paranoid screaming, or even dumber hiccupping and sillier goofing on 'All Along The Watchtower', Partridge goes along with a near-hypnotic, quasi-mantraic chanting scheme set to a wild onslaught of drum machines and throbbing post-punk guitars that sounds truly atmospheric instead of annoying. Okay, so it can be annoying if you want it to, but personally I found it quite easy to get into the mechanic, grinding groove. It's one thing to let your voice present you as a brainless dork and pass it for "avantgarde", and another thing to actually attach a meaning to the way you're singing, I gotta tell you.
So - for many people XTC seems to start off right here, with nothing particularly perverted, inverted, or extraverted to offend their tastes. I'm certainly not of the latter conviction, finding a lot to like about the band's Seventies' records, but it must also be said that the post-punk/New Wave period of the band certainly left enough traces in their image and songwriting to help them forge a distinctive personality in the Eighties. In other words, there would be no Skylarking without Black Sea, and there would hardly be a Black Sea without White Music. This is important to remember.

Black Sea (1980)
This is heavy stuff, and Partridge claims that that the point was to capture the band's raucous live sound. The relentless slew of mechanical rockers is nearly too much to handle, but there are tons of great tunes anyway. Just look at the first three: the irresistably rocking single "Respectable Street"; Moulding's even more popular, slightly goofy "Generals And Majors"; and the brilliantly produced, mechanized ska number "Living Through Another Cuba." The single "Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me)" is more of the same quirky, loping, threateningly jagged ska-influenced pop. It's true that a couple of the songs are lyrically and musically pedestrian, with Partridge reusing poetic devices on "Rocket From A Bottle" and "Burning With Optimism's Flames," and Moulding just not trying very hard on "Love At First Sight." But that's mere quibbling, and in the end you'll be happy you tracked this record down. Producer Steve Lillywhite returns, and it's not a coincidence that the Ray Davies-like social protest "Paper And Iron (Notes And Coins)" and creepy "Travels In Nihilon" perfectly replicate U2's contemporary big beat sound. Black Sea did decently on the charts, but like all of XTC's efforts failed to crack the U.S. Top 40.