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**Skylarking by XTC**
★★★★★

In the annals of pop perfection, few albums shimmer with the pastoral beauty and melodic sophistication of XTC's 1986 masterpiece *Skylarking*. Like discovering a secret garden hidden behind industrial Swindon's grey facades, this collection of songs represents the moment when Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding's songwriting genius finally found its ideal sonic vessel – even if the journey to get there nearly destroyed the band in the process.

By the mid-eighties, XTC had already established themselves as one of Britain's most inventive post-punk outfits, but creative tensions and Partridge's crippling stage fright had forced them into studio-only existence. Enter Todd Rundgren, the mercurial American producer whose reputation for both brilliance and tyranny preceded him. The pairing seemed inspired on paper – Rundgren's production wizardry meeting XTC's sophisticated pop sensibilities – but the reality proved far more combustible.

The recording sessions at Rundgren's Utopia Sound Studios became legendary for all the wrong reasons. Partridge and Rundgren clashed repeatedly, with the producer's autocratic methods butting heads against the songwriter's perfectionist tendencies. Rundgren famously dismissed much of the band's material, restructured songs without consultation, and created an atmosphere so toxic that bassist Colin Moulding reportedly spent sessions hiding in the bathroom. Yet from this creative crucible emerged something miraculous – an album that sounds effortless in its beauty, each song flowing into the next like movements in a pastoral symphony.

*Skylarking* inhabits a uniquely English musical landscape, somewhere between the Kinks' village green preservation society and the Beatles' psychedelic countryside rambles. The album's genius lies in its cyclical structure, tracing the arc of a relationship from spring's first blush through winter's bitter end. Rundgren's production bathes everything in warm, honeyed tones, with layered harmonies and orchestral flourishes that transform even the most melancholic moments into things of beauty.

The album's emotional centerpiece, "Dear God," became XTC's biggest hit despite – or perhaps because of – its controversial questioning of religious faith. Partridge's child-like vocals deliver devastating theological doubts over a deceptively simple arrangement that builds to a gospel-tinged crescendo. It's a song that manages to be both deeply personal and universally resonant, crystallizing the album's themes of innocence lost and faith questioned.

Equally magnificent is "Grass," a meditation on mortality that finds profound beauty in life's fleeting nature. Moulding's bass lines dance beneath layers of acoustic guitars while Partridge contemplates the cycle of seasons with the wide-eyed wonder of a nature poet. "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul" showcases the band's more experimental tendencies, its circular guitar patterns and philosophical lyrics creating a hypnotic journey through inner space.

The gorgeous "Season Cycle" serves as the album's thesis statement, compressing an entire relationship into four verses that mirror the changing seasons. It's pop songwriting of the highest order – economical yet expansive, simple yet profound. Meanwhile, "Summer's Cauldron" bubbles with pastoral psychedelia, its backwards guitars and swirling harmonies evoking lazy afternoon reveries.

Perhaps most remarkably, "1000 Umbrellas" transforms a simple love song into something approaching the sublime. Partridge's vocals float over a bed of acoustic guitars and subtle strings while he promises protection from life's storms. It's the sound of mature pop music, sophisticated without being pretentious, emotional without being maudlin.

Despite the fraught recording process, *Skylarking* stands as XTC's creative peak and one of the eighties' finest albums. Its influence can be heard in everyone from Radiohead to Blur, while its sophisticated approach to pop songwriting helped pave the way for Britpop's more cerebral moments. The album's reputation has only grown with time, regularly appearing on critics' best-of lists and finding new audiences through streaming platforms.

More than three decades later, *Skylarking* remains a testament to the transformative power of creative friction. Like the seasonal cycle it celebrates, the album captures both the beauty and melancholy of change, creating something timelessly beautiful from the chaos of human emotion. In XTC's catalog of consistently excellent albums, *Skylarking* stands as their undisputed masterpiece – a perfect fusion of English eccentricity and universal truth that