Great Albums In History: Drums And Wires

XTC’s Drums And Wires is an album that often gets lost in the shadows of albums that came after it. XTC definitely owe most of their success to other albums, particularly 1986’s Skylarking, but Drums And Wires is essentially just as good of an album. Released in 1979, it was their first album after the departure of founding keyboardist Barry Andrews. Instead of trying to replace Andrews, however, they elected to record without keyboards, with only drums and “wires” (by which they mean guitar strings). The result was XTC’s first masterpiece and an album that would create the format for much of the band’s future success.

“Making Plans For Nigel”

While Andy Partridge was definitely the most prolific and dominant creative force in XTC, bassist Colin Moulding’s contributions to the band were often some of the clear highlights on XTC’s albums. Perhaps most famous among Moulding’s songs is “Making Plans For Nigel”, one of the band’s biggest hits. The song is a chirpy little slice of New Wave, with reverb-heavy drums and a skittery guitar line. Moulding sings an incredibly British tale of young Nigel, who’s future is being completely mapped out for him by his parents. He’s destined to work in “British steel”, they say. Nigel quietly resigns himself to this future. “If young Nigel says he’s happy, he must be happy,” sings Moulding. Partridge’s incredibly silly “oo-oo’s” keep the mood light hearted, helping create one of XTC’s enduring masterpieces.

“Helicopter”

The spastic nature of Andy Partridge is well-documented and few songs showcase this warped insanity as well as “Helicopter”. With its frenetic guitar line and Partridge’s increasingly demented vocal performance, the song spirals out of control over the course of four minutes. Lyrically, the song describes a girl so wild and free-spirited that she’s practically flying away into the air (“now she’s away from convent, she’s gone wild, she’s grown from a nice young lady to a child”). The song eventually works itself into such a frenzy that everything basically collapses, with Partridge bellowing a few last syllables before everything ends.

“Day In Day Out”

Another one of Moulding’s contributions to the album, “Day In Day Out” resembles a Talking Heads song if it had been left in British hands for too long. Once again, Moulding is skewering the English culture that dictates that you get a nice, boring job and work constantly until you die. The only possible excitement lies when the work week finally ends: “Friday is heaven.” Partridge adds a bunch of spiky guitar, including a fairly out-there guitar coda that fades away as the song ends.

“When You’re Near Me I Have Difficulty”

Andy Partridge has actually written a surprising number of love songs for someone so high strung, but few can reach the hilarious heights of this song. Right off the bat, he announces “when you’re near me I have trouble respirating.” Besides the fact that “respirating” is not a word usually found in rock songs, the sentiment of being so in love with somebody that you literally can barely function is so charmingly ridiculous. Add Partridge’s absurd bridge, in which he says “now I’m feeling like a jellyfish” (completely with a little keyboard fill emulating jellyfish…somehow) and you’ve got a classic XTC song.

“Ten Feet Tall”

Not to be undone in the charming love song department, Moulding wrote the equally pleasant and enjoyable “Ten Feet Tall”, another song featuring a rather skewed perspective on love. Moulding describes his infatuation as so destabilizing that it’s almost as if he’s walking around on stilts, desperately trying to maintain any kind of balance. The drifting acoustic arpeggio that serves as the song’s main riff captures this sense of carefree awkwardness wonderfully, proving that Moulding was just as capable of writing great songs as his more celebrated partner in crime.

“Roads Girdle The Globe”

Of course, after writing a couple of charming love songs, XTC had to bring us back to solidly weird material and “Roads Girdle The Globe” is about as bizarre as they come. With a clunky, zooming bass line and shattered guitar stabs, Partridge creates a wacky tribute to…roads, I guess. His celebration of roads and traveling goes as far as to say “hail mother motor, hail piston rotor, hail wheel.” Not unlike his American equivalent, David Byrne, Partridge was a master of finding unusual perspectives on otherwise ordinary and everyday subjects.

“Real By Reel”

What good would a New Wave album be without a little bit of modern paranoia? Filling this void on Drums And Wires, Partridge gives us the nervous, twitchy “Real By Reel”. Our narrator is convinced that his government is filming his every move (“they can film you in bed or when you take a bath”). Partridge goes even farther, suggesting that those government suits are just filming everybody to entertain themselves. The song’s backdrop of skipping guitar lines and jumpy drumming helps underscore this song’s combination of nervous energy and just plain silliness.

“Millions”

Shifting gears dramatically, “Millions” features Partridge contemplating the vast populations of the “Eastern world.” Touching on Westerners taste for Eastern cuisine and imported products, Partridge begins to question why these people seem to want Western culture for themselves. “I saw you asking for western thinking, I say it’s poison that you’ll be drinking, stay as East, as far away as dreams will let you be.” The song’s restrained instrumental performances add to the general seriousness of the matter, breaking away from the goofiness of previous songs on the album.

“That Is The Way”

Colin Moulding returns with another song lambasting the regimented social expectations of English culture. Over a list of simple tasks (“kiss your aunt”, “use a fork”), a voice dictates “do this” and “do that”. Moulding, for his part, seems helpless in the face of all these demands (“this is how you do it and who am I to reason why?”) The song is eventually interrupted by a completely unexpected jazzy trumpet solo, adding to the mockery of what it means to be “cultured.”

“Outside World”

This song explodes out of the gates with a ferocious guitar riff, played at a mind-bendingly fast tempo. It’s definitely XTC’s closest link to their punk-rock roots on Drums And Wires. Again, the band are attacking high society, painting a picture of a woman so wealthy that she doesn’t understand a world outside of her extravagant home, with “eleven lions laughing at her lakeside.” The song is unrelentingly fast and loud, in keeping with the class politics of the lyrics.

“Scissor Man”

For a song that sounds as silly and ridiculous as “Scissor Man”, the subject matter is strangely morbid. Partridge creates the character of the Scissor Man as a kind of vigilante, “putting end to evil doers games.” Partridge advises the listener to be good (“never poison people”) or they’ll have to answer to the righteous anger of the Scissor Man. A razor-edged guitar riff and thudding bass line drive the song along, finally culminating in the hilarious punch line: “when you wake up guilty in the morning, you may find important pieces gone.”

“Complicated Game”

XTC’s albums tend to have incredibly bizarre closing tracks and Drums And Wires has one of the strangest. Over a downbeat, doomy musical backdrop, Partridge presents a series of odd choices (“should I put my finger to the left,” “should I part my hair upon the left,” etc.) before things become more serious. “A little boy asked me should he put his vote upon the left”, Partridge sings, before concluding that the answer to all these questions is that “it doesn’t matter” since “someone else will come along and move it.” Partridge eventually extrapolates this to God himself, saying “God asked me should he put his world on the left”, before again coming to the conclusion that none of it matters. This type of cynicism would rear its ugly head a few more times over Partridge’s career, but “Complicated Game” is one of the earliest and most startling examples of the darker themes that were always lapping at the edges of XTC’s music.