Replay: XTC, Black Sea, 1980

The "underrated" label now permafixed to Andy Partridge and XTC has always been apt, and always exasperatingly inadequate. "Underrated" here begs for asterisks, grim little daggers--anything to shake the word's connotation of "precious only to critics and fringe devotees bewitched past reliability." Enough already. Forget smart, catchy, underappreciated art pop; a cosmic accident has befallen us, and somewhere there actually exists a parallel world, absolutely identical to ours, except that round glasses evoke a cherubic Partridge as quickly as they do Lennon, and "Dear God" ringtones interrupt funerals.

After perking ears in the U.K. with the technicolor ska-punk and brood of their first three releases, the band stretched out, turned up the crunch and managed to crack the U.S. top 50 with Black Sea. Alas, this was an XTC that existed before falling so heavily into that unsettling medieval compulsion of later days. Under young Steve Lillywhite's production, tracks like "Generals and Majors" and "Rocket from a Bottle" swoop past in fine balance. Eleven songs and nothing remotely throwaway; instead, we get boundless imagination from Dave Gregory's jazz-tinged guitar and great, gleaming anchors from Colin Moulding's basslines, still fresh after a quarter-century. "Towers of London" and "Optimism's Flames" offer startlingly fluid, crafted laments from Partridge the working-class envoy. Forget gifted, inspired and influential; the man's ineffable warmth still astounds through a voice that's awkward and strong--something born from a shy, crossbows-and-painted-miniatures sensibility cut with growling tantrums that inform his throat without ever commandeering it. Wry, weaving vocals somehow stay independent of the rich instrumentation beneath without antagonizing it; they're perverse, perfect complements, like a lynx on satin sheets.

But if any footnotes to "underrated" are really deserved to explain XTC's absence from rock's collective conscious, one of them has to read, "By choice." Partridge was famously stage-frightened, and as scrutinized cats on beds are wont to do, he crawled underneath and hid in 1982 when awful and repeated onstage meltdowns prompted an end to all live performances. Maybe this was the cosmic accident. It sure seems that way to decades worth of disappointed fans, but to love Partridge (or anyone) at the highest level is to love the flaws. Artists are funny, and his attempts to navigate fame's dark waters were almost certainly scuttled by the same turbulence that made brilliant studio bursts like Black Sea even possible.--Dave Surratt