Review Summary: Meanwhile, in Bizarro World…
Welcome to XTC’s The Big Express, an album so bold and brash that it evades the fine-toothed comb of critics to this day. As a rollicking western satire it features the finer things in life – utilizing kazoos, harping on harmonicas, blurting tubas, blabbering verses at the speed of light and belting out “yahoo’s” over a fiddle. Much of it is an eccentric pop musical with exorbitantly grandiose ruminations about life in the aglime-blanketed countryside, such as the entire song around the startup and slowdown noises of a steam train (Train Running Low on Soul Coal) and lyrics that evoke the pastoral retreats of the Partridge and Moulding’s childhoods. But in case it wasn’t immediately apparent, the title is more specifically referring to the band opening up and letting loose.
To understand this, we have to go back to the first height of XTC’s career. After repeated incidents with lead singer/songwriter Andy Partridge that included collapsing on stage and breaking into a sprint off the stage of a sold-out show, the band cancelled their tour and announced they would only focus their energy on releasing albums. Their label supported them wholeheartedly - is what I would say if this actually occurred in Bizarro World. Instead, you can hear Andy’s true opinions in a distinctly Frank Zappian-fashion on I Bought Myself A Liarbird, where he throws shade his at band managers. After Mummer was then released as a relaxed endeavor to soothe the anxiety of the group, The Big Express would be released as an original Thomas Kinkade marred and smeared by broad streaks of violent colors, an exercise that would hardly warrant fault considering it led to the band’s landmark of artistic creativity on Skylarking.
Still, this burly boy is an oddity that shows the band at their most boastful. The Big Express begs to be turned up in volume and for good reason; it is needed to be able to pick out so many of the finer details that get lost in the muddled mix. All fourteen songs are hindered by a dynamically flat mix that disturbingly clashes with the multitudes of dense layers and instrument tracks. Vocals are scratched by clamours and the more things that are occurring at once, the more abrasive the music becomes, which is an unfortunate shame because the so-called Godfather of Britpop is consistently able to flaunt his clever polyphonies and additive instrumentation in ways that pop artists can only dream of. A few top-tier moments include the post-choruses of the hoedown Shake You Donkey Up, the sea-chanty and hymn to women that is aptly titled All You Pretty Girls, the unconventionally charming Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, and the standout This World Over which beautifully discusses the anxiety of nuclear war during rising tensions that occurred between Reagan and Russia. There’s even a brief, glowing review of that particular single written by Morrisey, if you’re into that. Then there is the tinge of David Bowie glamour rock (Wake Up), the playfulness of the Beatles (Red Brick Dream, I Remember the Sun). Conversely, The Everyday Story of Smalltown is a tiresome slog that serves only to continue the musical as a rather uninteresting narrative piece. You’re the Wish You Are I Had (sic) is a haphazardly imagined and novelty pop slick, and Blue Overalls is unintentionally self-destructive, unraveling the end of the album in an unsubstantial way that fails to assist the melodies or thematics of the overall package. But the case-in-point example for production issues and the band’s exaggerated songwriting would be Train Running Low on Soul Coal, a song that attempts to pass as a brilliantly non-demure hallmark of the album (and very well might be), but is difficult to pass as anything but contrived and forceful mess of ideas cobbled together.
There are other critics that have claimed XTC to be a taste not yet acquired by the public, and there is an agreement that they were certainly ahead of their time. But to say that XTC was throwing material at the wall and hoping it would stick, is a complete fabrication and denial of the intricate wildness here in this unfairly treated album. My Britpop palette has been stretched and expanded, a big bang of notes in all forms played, frayed, and squeezed through a kaleidoscope to tickle my ears. Not only that, but I am now amused that there is an artist that was obsessed with locomotives far before Steven Wilson, who is surely in a perpetual state of ecstasy (sic) while remixing The Big Express as the next album in line for the XTC catalog remasters. With its release, those grimy wheels churning metal over metal and bogies rumbling will finally be clearly audible as the beautiful 60-ton angels they are, for future generations to enjoy as it was intended.
