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Resurrection
Paul Golder
XTC were the first band I really loved – I was only 10 when their breakthrough hit Making Plans For Nigel was released as a single but it had a major influence on the direction I took as a music fan. The song was written and sung by Colin Moulding, one of the band’s two main singer/songwriters along with Andy Partridge. I spent a lot of my teenage years getting very well acquainted with their albums, including Drums and Wires, Black Sea and English Settlement.
While they never had massive amounts of chart success – only one top ten single and album in the UK – they were a massive influence on bands both here and in the USA. Radiohead, Blur and Kurt Cobain from Nirvana were all big fans of their work.
The band split in 2006 and, musically, Colin has been very quiet since then, with rumours of him leaving the music business – but he has resurfaced with a new single, The Hardest Battle. In a music career stretching 49 years it’s the first time he’s issued a solo single under his own name. It’s a great track, gentle but powerful and reminiscent of the Beach Boys and the Beatles.
Colin talked about how the band were originally known as punks but moved through the genres to new wave, psychedelia and progressive rock too – and why he’s decided to make music now. There were also some great stories about the band’s early days and what the music scene was like when punk and new wave exploded in the late 1970s.
The Hardest Battle is out now and available from Burning Shed Records. Neither XTC nor Colin have an official website but you can find out more about XTC at massive fan website Chalkhills or on Colin’s fan page on Facebook.
Tonight’s playlist:
Franz Ferdinand – Can’t Stop Feeling
Gordon Taggart – Footsteps
No Thee No Ess – Chorus
Kynd – Get What You Deserve
BAXTR – In Pop We Trust
Fightmilk – Banger #4
Cat Dowling – Freedom
Bikini Test Failure – Nobody Knows Anything (2021)
Colin Moulding – The Hardest Battle
*** interview with Colin
XTC – Are You Receiving Me?
*** more Colin
Colin Moulding – Say It (Original Version)
*** more Colin
XTC – No Thugs In Our House
Gabriel’s Dawn – I Don’t Believe (In The Summer Of Love)
Eve Goodman – Wave Upon Wave
Paris Youth Foundation – Twenty Two
Croft & Cotes – Wild Fear
Emperor of Ice Cream – High Rise Low Rise
Hardwicke Circus – No Surrender
Desperate Journalist – The Victim
Stereo Club – Parma Violet Gin
Sybs – Llygaid
She Made Me Do It – Otherworldly
Piroshka – V.O.
Melys – Protect and Survive
Catatonia – Game On
