XTC - Wasp Star, Apple Venus 2 (2000)

Y por fin llega Wasp Star, la estrella avispa, que después del conceptual Apple Venus 1 es un retorno a la frescura sin complicaciones del XTC de siempre... ojo, sin complicaciones es un decir: bajo la aparente sencillez se agazapan letras muy sagaces, elegantes composiciones y acróbaticos arreglos ... podrás preferir la una o la otra, pero las dos son hermosas a su modo. Son las dos caras de Venus. Y si no... venga, escuchala!

Artista: XTC

Álbum: Wasp Star, Apple Venus 2
Año: 2000
Género: Pop Rock, Beat
Duración: 48:54
Nacionalidad: Inglesa

Lista de Temas:

1. Playground 

2. Stupidly Happy 

3. In Another Life 

4. My Brown Guitar 

5. Boarded Up 

6. I'm the Man Who Murdered Love 

7. We're All Light 

8. Standing in for Joe 

9. Wounded Horse 

10.You and the Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful 

11.Church of Women 

12.The Wheel and the Maypole 

Alineación:
Andy Partridge / voz, guitarra
Colin Moulding / voz, bajo

(y una multitud de músicos colaboradores)

     Wasp Star

Despues de siete años los XTC finalmente  rompieron su silencio, y el resultado fue toda una bomba para sus seguidores:  Apple Venus 1, en el que con bastante  frecuencia se desvíaban del formato beat  tan habitual en ellos, para emprender incursiones en una música mucho más conceptual, que abarca desde el minimalismo hasta el jazz, con delicados  tintes new age, en algunos momentos. 

 Se esperaba una segunda parte, Wasp Star, que prometía ser aún más novedosa. Pero Wasp Star, Apple Venus 2, resultó ser un retorno al beat guitarrero y sin complicaciones  de Oranges & Lemons… decepción para algunos, algo que celebrar para otros. Para mí fue simplemente un retorno a lo sencillo, a lo que realmente les nacía hacer, mientras que Apple Venus 1 fue la excepción a la regla. Por eso no juzgaría este nuevo álbum como hicieron algunos: “hecho con las sobras del primero”. 

Sería como criticar a los Beatles por haber lanzado Yellow Submarine (1969) después de un tema tan conceptual y metafísico como Strawberry Fields Forever ( 1967) o I’m the Walrus, de la misma época. Simplemente se sintieron libres de hacerlo, y lo hicieron. Punto. La canción Yellow Submarine, para seguir con el ejemplo,  para mi es una genialidad:  es muy difícil  hacer algo tan sencillo, por no decir pueril,  y tan bueno a la vez; es una canción contagiosa y comercial, pero a la vez sin fecha de caducidad, de esas pocas melodías que desafían el paso del tiempo, cuando para la mayoría innovar  implica hacer cosas tan tremendamente complicadas que al final a lo mejor ni ellos mismos pagarían por oírlas.

Ahora bien, una vez dicho esto, si tuviera que elegir, en su conjunto, prefiero Apple Venus 1, sin que eso quiera decir que Apple Venus 2 no tenga un gran encanto y que no abrigue un ramillete de canciones preciosas...

 Y me pregunto: qué diablos significará estrella avispa (wasp star)? Pues miren lo que dice la wikipedia hablando de los mayas: "Muchas de las deidades recibían distintos nombres y propiedades, por ejemplo a Venus la llamaban los mayas Ah-Chicum-Ek', la gran estrella de la mañana, y Xux ek, la estrella avispa."  https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronom%C3%ADa_maya

Nada más y nada menos que la Venus maya!

Poco después de salir este álbum, XTC colapsó como banda.

Antes de terminar mi breve presentación quiero hacerle a todos un obsequio. Unos calendarios de XTC que encontré en una de mis pesquisas. Si, es de 2016, así que aunque haya pasado ya más de la mitad del año, todavía sirve. Aquí lo tienen:  http://www.10ft.it/xtcalendar_2016.html

Quiero agradecer por su valiosa ayuda en este post a Calle Neptuno y por supuesto a Moe, demiurgo de este universo paralelo.

 el Canario

                             

                  

Una crítica de la Montreal Virgin Radio:

ALBUM REVIEW

Anyone expecting Wasp Star: Apple Venus, Vol. 2 to continue the majestic acoustic-orchestral blends of Apple Venus will be disappointed, because it's a straightforward collection of sharp, witty, well-constructed pop songs. Directness is perhaps the oddest thing about Wasp Star - it's unassuming pop from a band that operated on a conceptual plain for nearly 20 years. It could be argued that all the songs that fit a dark, introspective mood went to Apple Venus, XTC's first album after seven years in exile, while Wasp Star wound up as a clearinghouse for everything else. If that is true, it ignores a basic fact -- XTC's leftovers are better than most band's keepers. "Leftovers" isn't quite an accurate term, either. These songs are orphans, tunes without a particular project, which may mean that Wasp Star is an album of moments, but there's plenty to cherish here. Colin Moulding is in fine shape, with the spare "Boarded Up" and the clever "Standing in for Joe." Andy Partridge has a few tricks up his sleeve -- his compositions are heavy on electric guitars, he builds "Wounded Horse" around a blues riff, and "You and the Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful" is just about the breeziest thing he's ever written -- but for the most part, he's in pop craftsman mode, turning out expert, layered tunes that may not push his talents but certainly exploit his capabilities to their fullest. After all, most pop bands would give their eyeteeth to have songs as smart, melodic, and memorable as "Playground," "Stupidly Happy," "My Brown Guitar" and "I'm the Man Who Murdered Love" as their orphans -- and if these constitute an average XTC album, that's a testament to what a terrific band they are.

– Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

Y además la ya acostumbrada reseña de Chalkhills: 

http://chalkhills.org/reelbyreal/a_WaspStar.html

Sin más dilación, vamos a disfrutar de lo que algunos llamaron “La manzana mordida” por la imagen de su portada. Otro arquetipo  que nos reconduce al imaginero beatle: la manzana, en fin….que lo disfruten!

un último articulo ( de Pop Matters): 

BY PATRICK SCHABE

22 May 2000

              Of Partridges and Mouldings: The life and times of a fanboy

I was a mere stripling of a boy, all of 14 years old, when I first was introduced to the music of XTC. The year was 1989, and the band had released its classic Oranges and Lemonsalbum, with the radio and MTV friendly pop tunes “Mayor of Simpleton” and “King for a Day” catching some air time. Just before my birthday that year, I mentioned to a friend that I enjoyed “Mayor of Simpleton,” and would drop everything to watch the video if I happened to have the tube turned to MTV. So he bought the tape for me on my birthday. I’ve been hooked ever since.

So hooked, in fact, that I became a fanboy. My love of XTC was not the average, “I’ve got this tape I really like and I play it in my room a lot,” it was more of the “I’ve got to own everything ever recorded by this band!” variety. XTC became something of a quest for me, something that led me through the annals of the pop lexicon, expanding my horizons of music well beyond the Dr. Demento/Weird Al Yankovich stage I had emerged from.

Although everyone accuses me of loving the band because bandleader and singer/songwriter Andy Partridge and I share the same last name (you’ll have to read the bio page to figure that one out). Lead guitarist Dave Gregory’s last name happened to be my middle name. Nothing really tied me to bass player Colin Moulding, except that in 1989, I really wanted his hair. No, these were just synchronistic coincidences, feathers in my cap. The true devotion was to the music. I could sing the words to every song on every major album release.

I went back to 1977 and XTC’s first album, White Music, and continued my travels up to 1986’s Skylarking, the album that spawned their most famous footnote in music history, “Dear God.” Then I started buying CD singles for the bonus tracks, searching high and low through record stores for vinyl copies and T-shirts. I subscribed to the fanzines. I saved VHS copies of whatever videos I could glean from the TV. I read the interviews, caught whatever appearances by XTC I could, and painted hand-made T-shirts. When my family went to Hawaii for my dad’s re-marriage, the one cherished souvenir I brought home with me were those 6” x 6” cardboard posters that record stores use to promote albums and which I located in a blissful random moment after the release of 1992’s Nonsuch. When I went to England in 1993, I spent all my time on Portobello Road scouring the bins for bootleg copies of concerts and whatever I could find that would save me the cost of buying imports. My favorite item in my collection is the stack of Oranges and Lemons book covers that were given away for free at 7-Elevens (who knows what Geffen was thinking with that one!).

Fanboys and fangirls are not like the average cheese-eating Nine Inch Nails freak who populate high schools. They’re freaks of an entirely different order. They listen to bands, usually one in particular, all the time. They know everything about the band. They collect with the voracity of Pokémon card traders. Religion becomes supplanted by music, by posters and promo photos. They spend considerable amounts of time and money in the pursuit of anything that even bears the remote stamp of their obsession.

Being a fanboy of XTC in my high schools years was especially difficult, particularly freakish. This was before the Internet connected people all over the world quickly and easily. XTC was a relatively obscure band, especially among teens that were infatuated with Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Wearing an XTC T-shirt to school wasn’t going to get me beat up, but it wasn’t doing me any social favors. I didn’t care. Even my friends who listened respectfully to their music and to my rants of adoration were unable to understand the depths of my devotion. This was a band that never toured, fer Chrissakes!

It was through the contacts that I made in the pages of their fanzine that I was able to develop a sense of fan community. If they read this, I owe massive debts of gratitude and love to Ian C. Stewart and Rhubarb (my XTC pen pals) for their help in supporting my XTC habit over the years. My compulsive reading on the band led me to discover that critics and other musicians around the world in all genres had a great deal of respect for the band, even if they never had enormous commercial success.

Then XTC went underground and I went off to college. In an extended contract dispute with Virgin Records, XTC went on strike and refused to record any more music. Going to college meant I had little to no money with which to support the life of a fanboy, and I slowly slipped out of the fold. It took seven years from the release of Nonsuch for XTC to finally break away from Virgin, sign with a new label, and finally put out 1999’s fabulous Apple Venus, Volume 1. Putting that CD in my stereo for the first time was like coming home to an old friend. It was one of the most emotional musical experiences I’d had in years.

So, it was with no small amount of trepidation that I placed Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) into the CD tray and pushed it gently into the port. You see, Apple Venus Volume 1 was what Andy Partridge cheekily named an “orchoustic” album, referring to the fact that it eschewed the traditional pop electric guitar in favor of orchestration and straight up acoustic guitar. It was beautiful and amazing, but it was a slight break from the XTC of yore.Wasp Star is what Andy calls an “eclectric” album, going back to jangly guitars and reverb. I held my breath as I played it, hoping they still had the particular beauty of songcraft and musicianship with electric pop that they used to. I needn’t have worried.