XTC: Skylarking

There is surely no other British alt.pop band as justifiably revered as XTC. The unit started off in the mid-'70s as an angular proposition, but engaged with the 1980s with a master's degree in advanced pop songwriting. The band, now officially defunct, delivered many brilliant albums throughout the 1980s, '90s and early noughties, but Skylarking (1986) is, arguably, their masterpiece. It's a semi-concept work about, essentially, the mundanities of day-to-day living, influenced by The Kinks, The Beach Boys and The Beatles, and meticulously (if controversially) overseen by maverick US song-writer/producer Todd Rundgren. Skylarking is pastoral psychedelia at its most glorious. That it would go no further than 90 in the UK album charts (70 in the US) meant that XTC's days on major labels were numbered. But if there ever was an obscure psych-pop album ripe for rediscovering, Skylarking is it. ape.uk.net

Download: 1,000 Umbrellas, Dear God, Ballet for a Rainy Day