The Big Express

, Andy Partridge, and Dave Gregory. XTC's previous album Mummer was their first work after resigning from live performances in 1982. It was released in August 1983 after several months of delays due to the band's creative difference with producer Steve Nye and Virgin Records Virtually every contemporary review of the album accused the band of falling out of touch with the contemporary music climate. Bassist Colin Moulding thought that "when we came back from America after our aborted tour of 1982 ... people like Spandau Ballet had moved onto the scene; new groups were coming up and there was no place for us." Dissatisfied with the downturn in their career, drummer Terry Chambers quit the group early in the Mummer sessions to take care of his wife and newborn child in Australia. Immediately after Mummer, he stated that he thought the next album would have a more contemporary R&B sound and that the band were "conscious of wanting to get away from the" style of their previous two studio albums, and said that "I don't think you'll hear any acoustic guitars this time, or any particularly multilayered things." Years later, he reflected that "Funk Pop a Roll" from Mummer could be considered "the first Big Express track". In late 1983, XTC released the holiday single "Thanks for Christmas" under the pseudonym Three Wise Men. It was produced by David Lord, owner of Crescent Studios in Bath, who impressed the band with the story that he had turned down an offer to arrange the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home" (1967). He met Partridge while working as an engineer on The Naked Shakespeare. According to biographer Neville Farmer, Lord was "a world's away from XTC", having turned down the Beatles offer because he believed the Beatles were not serious musicians, and "made a deep impression on Andy. He hadn't had a musical guru before now. David Lord could hold his own in any musical conversation and piqued Andy's interests in unexplored musical areas." Moulding was not as effused and said he was unable to relate to Lord on a musical level. XTC subsequently negotiated a deal that allowed them to work as much as they want on their next album at his studio. In April 1984, about a month into the new album sessions, the group learned that ex-manager Ian Reid had incurred them an outstanding value-added tax bill of several hundred thousand pounds, and they immediately pursued litigation that would last for the next five years. David Lord adds: "This story about me turning down the Beatles as 'not serious musicians' is nonsense! I think it grew from something I told Andy once - as a music student in the days when 'Sgt. Pepper' was being recorded, a number of us were invited to be part of the cheering crowd at Abbey Road; sadly I was already committed elsewhere and couldn't make it! That's all!" ==Concept and production==

formed a backdrop to the record. The intention for The Big Express was to "let the music have a more boisterous feel" and for the lyrics to be more worldly. For the album title, Partridge wanting something that was reminiscent of his hometown Swindon, which was well-known for its railway repair workshop, the Swindon Works. Working titles included Coalface, Head of Steam, Shaking Skin House, Bastard Son of Hard Blue Rayhead, The Known World, Bull with the Golden Guts, Mindless Sax and Violins, and Under the Rusting North Star. The Big Express was chosen for its double meaning, referring to express trains and artistic expression. Partridge envisioned the record as "industrial pop. We come from a railway town, and I was like, 'Well, let's wallow in that; in the imagery and the sounds. Let's make an album that's riveted together and a bit rusty around the edges and is sort of like broken Victorian massive machinery.'" Two were of a political bent ("This World Over" and "Reign of Blows"). The majority of Partridge's songs were composed on an open E-tuned guitar and on 24-track tape. such as the Mellotron they had purchased for that album. Session musician Stuart Gordon was brought in as violinist. Some overdubs were recorded at Odyssey Studios in London. Mixing was completed in early August by producer Phil Thornalley at RAK Studio Two; Lord left the project a month earlier to fulfill a contract with the Europeans, a British band. The end result returned the group to a brighter and uptempo sound Partridge jokingly referred to some parts of the album as the only time the group were befallen with stereotypical 1980s-style production. In Partridge's view, the group's psychedelic influences were "leaking out" through the use of Mellotron, phasing, and "backwards so-and-so". Moulding offered the song "Shiny Cage", but it was rejected by the band, Partridge said, "because it was too stupidly Beatley - it was everything from Revolver all smashed into one song." ==Songs==

Side one "Wake Up" Partridge wrote all the songs on The Big Express, except for "Wake Up" and "I Remember the Sun", which were written by Moulding. "Wake Up" opens the album with guitars and piano followed by a chorus lyric that proclaims "who cares, you might be dead". To write the song, Moulding started with a three-note piano figure, which he then overdubbed with two guitar riffs: "The track didn't really happen until David Lord got hold of it. A local girl came in and sang the 'choir', tracked up a load of times." Of the song's lyrics, he said that although they were "not quite autobiographical, it's me fantasizing about being my father, about being in the Navy." Partridge met Wexler at the US premiere of the 1980 film Times Square and remembered: "I didn't want to think of it as love at first sight, because I'd only been married for something like six months, so it was a bit painful, you know? It was like, "'Shit! I'm married!" Side two "The Everyday Story of Smalltown" in 2005 "The Everyday Story of Smalltown" introduces side two with the sounds of kazoo and drums. The title is a pun on "lyrebird". In a 1984 interview, he did acknowledge a fondness for "things with pounding piano, everything from Velvet Underground's 'I'm Waiting for My Man', to things that people like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones did at any time -- I just love banana-fingers piano." Three outtakes were relegated as B-sides to the album's singles. "Red Brick Dream" is an original poem about the Great Western Railway workshops. Partridge set it to music after he was commissioned to write a song for a documentary about Swindon. In the film, he is shown performing the song at Crescent. "Washaway" was another Moulding song about growing up at Pen Hill and the first he wrote on a keyboard. He said: "'This is looking at people going about their business but not being where [I] should be—not being in school." "Blue Overall" saw Partridge drawing on Led Zeppelin's reconfiguration of blues music as originally played by black musicians. The lyrics are a commentary on critics who criticize "white boys" for singing the blues "and the rip-off sharks who infest music's murky waters". ==Release==

'' locomotive pictured on the inner sleeve Virgin invested £33,000 into a music video for lead single "All You Pretty Girls", which peaked at number 55 on the UK Singles Chart. The Big Express was released on 15 October 1984. First pressings of the vinyl were contained in a circular record sleeve as an homage to the Small Faces' ''Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake (1968). For the inner sleeve, the members were photographed in GWR outfits on the footplate of the Lode Star'' locomotive at the Swindon Railway Museum. XTC appeared on Channel Four's Play at Home programme performing an acoustic version of "Train Running Low on Soul Coal". Although the LP reached a higher chart position than Mummer, it sold a lesser number of copies. The album spent two weeks on the UK charts, reaching number 38. In the US, the album spent 7 weeks on the Billboard 200 album charts and reached its peak position of number 178 in December 1984. Within weeks of the album's release, the band's finances were depleted and further payments of advancements and royalties were frozen on account of the Reid litigation, forcing the group to subsist on short-term loans from Virgin. Partridge then conceived of a cheaply budgeted project in which the group adopted pseudonyms and recorded several songs faithful to the style of 1960s psychedelia. The end product, ''25 O'Clock (1985), was publicised as a collection of recordings by an older band called "the Dukes of Stratosphear". The second and last Dukes album, Psonic Psunspot (1987), included "Shiny Cage", the Moulding song previously rejected for The Big Express''. ==Critical reception==

Contemporary The Big Express was met with critical acclaim, A reviewer for CMJ New Music Report wrote that the album was "mostly brilliant" and expressed hope that the band would gain the success and recognition they "fully deserv[e]". Ken Richardson of Stereo Review described the album as a "neglected masterwork". Rick Miller of The Spectator raved in a full-page review that it was "the most exciting record I've heard in years." He went on to say that in the year 2084, XTC would be as widely acclaimed as the Beatles. Writing for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau awarded the album a B score and recommended that the group write a musical, "Which would keep them working at the proper scale and be the best thing for steam-powered trains since Ray Davies." In the magazine Smash Hits, guest writer Morrissey penned a review of the follow-up single, "This World Over", that stated "XTC have stepped back from music industry machinations and are making better records." Erica Wexler, then a reviewer for Musician magazine, suggested that "XTC is never short of ideas; their only real flaw is a propensity for crowding together too many. But in this day of pop cliché, I'd take XTC's senses-working-overtime anytime. I just hope they're still not too far ahead of their time." In 1987, musician and writer Dave Bidini dubbed it perhaps "XTC's most humorless album - a sort of no-fun answer to the half-serious question asked on English Settlement. ... Colin Moulding gets philosophy-weird and Andy Partridge sounds depressed; the direction of the band seems blurred." Retrospective In later years, Partridge said "I love that album and nobody ever mentions it. That and Mummer are the two ignored discs." Moulding viewed the album less favourably. According to the Chicago Readers J.R. Jones, the album's songs rank "with the band's best work, but as a recording it's weighed down by the leaden drums". Qs Andrew Harrison described the record as "overproduced" and "LinnDrum-plagued", while the Chicago Tribunes Greg Kot said it was "XTC at its most cynical and grating". Music journalist Alexis Petridis referred to aborted tracks from Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993) as a disappointment for anyone "excited to hear [their] abandoned sessions with XTC's Andy Partridge ... they sound exactly as you would expect ... like the XTC of An Everyday Story of Smalltown". ==Demos, BBC Radio tracks and expanded reissue==

XTC compilations that feature previously unreleased tracks related to the album include Drums and Wireless (versions of "Seagulls" and "Wish" recorded in 1984 for BBC Radio) and Coat of Many Cupboards (home demos of "All You Pretty Girls" and "Wake Up"). Partridge's Fuzzy Warbles series included home demos of "Liarbird" (volume one), "Wish" (volume two), "Countdown to Christmas" (volume four), "Smalltown" (volume five), "Seagulls" (volume seven), "Shake You Donkey Up" and "Reign of Blows" (both Hinges). Throughout the 2010s, much of the band's catalog was reissued, one album at a time, in the form of deluxe packages centred on new stereo and 5.1 surround sound mixes by Steven Wilson. In 2017, the multitrack tapes for The Big Express were reported as missing, making it impossible for the album to be remixed. Partridge stated that the tapes were "not looked for yet" and that "we have to pay for any searches to find them". In 2022, the multitrack tapes were located and the album was remixed by Wilson, including the first-ever Dolby Atmos mix of an XTC work. The remixed and expanded reissue was finally released in September 2023. ==Track listing==

Note • CD issues prior to 2001 placed the bonus tracks between the original sides one and two of the album. • Original release information for bonus tracks sourced from Chalkhills and Children (1992), by Chris Twomey. ==Personnel==

Credits adapted from the album's liner notes and an interview with "One Two Testing". XTC • Andy Partridge – vocals, guitar, LinnDrum, harmonica, sleeve design • Colin Moulding – vocals, bass guitar • Dave Gregory – guitar, Yamaha CP-80 electric grand piano, Mellotron, Prophet-5 and Roland JX-3P synthesizers, E-mu Emulator Additional personnel • Peter Phipps – drums • Stuart Gordon – violin, viola • Annie Huchrak – female choir voice on "Wake Up" • Steve Saunders – euphonium on "Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her" Technical • David Lord – production (except "Red Brick Dream"), engineering, mixing, choir arrangement on "Wake Up" • XTC – production, mixing • Glenn Tommey – additional engineering • Phil Thornalley – mixing • Matt Barry – mixing assistant • Gavin Cochrane – sleeve photography • Ken Ansell – sleeve design • The Design Clinic – sleeve assembly ==Charts==