XTC: This Is Pop (2017)

Rather like one of their albums, this "rockumentary" as Andy Partridge disses it, is suitably bright and quirky but with an undertone of bathos nonetheless. Hailing from darkest Swindon, the group's two main men, songwriters Partridge and Colin Moulding and fellow members some short-lived, some longer term, especially guitarist Dave Gregory, charted an irregular passage across the English landscape and beyond. Whilst they never achieved any great lasting commercial success, they flirted with the charts here and in America fairly frequently although as one of their admirers here admits, their devoted fan-base probably never wanted their secret to get out too wildly.

I don't know all their music but adore their "Skylarking" album and possess this and their superb singles collection "Fossil Fuel" in my collection.

I liked the graphics running through the pie of toy-town models train around the countryside on some big express train, a metaphor not only for their nondescript small town roots but also their circular journey through the pop landscape arriving here and there at nowhere in particular.

Group leader Andy Partridge dominates the narrative, he has the most to say fir sure and whilst coming across occasionally like a self-important pain-in-the-proverbial, his passion for his music and this band shine through. Colin Moulding who probably ended up writing more chart hits for the group, along with long-time guitarist Gregory and drummer Terry Chambers, seem more down-to-earth and less flighty than Mr Partridge.

There aren't that many really significant events in the group's history the director can really go 2 for dramatic effect. Apart from the group's early inclusion in the punk / new wave movement, Partridge's psycosematic illness which forced the group off the road, the furore in American of Partridge's bleak atheistic "Dear God", it's really just a tale of musical progress from first to last especially after the py stopped touring to concentrate on studio work.

Of course this is the road the Beatles took in the 60,'s and Partridge cheekily equates his group to the Fab Four's progress near the end. Their fans and friends here include Stewart Copeland of the Police Clem Burke of Blondie and a bunch of modern musicians I admit I didn't recognise, plus there's a neat rock-doc in-joke as Rick Wakeman makes his omnipresent appearance.

What this always entertaining film has certainly encouraged me to do is to delve deeper into the group's recorded history which I'll be doing with keen anticipation in the next little while.