Regarding the origins of Psonic Sunspot, The Mojo article summing up XTC’s history (up to the first Apple Venus album) claims that “The Dukes Of Stratosphear were reactivated, this time at Virgin’s request, though Andy wasn’t keen.”

Oh, really? Let’s see what Andy had to say in the Todd Bernhardt interview on “Collideascope”:

AP: . . . “Collideascope” was an earlier lyric that I thought was a bit too daft to do anything with, so it was left to rot. And I grabbed it when I was secretly writing for the next Dukes record—I didn’t think it ought to be done, but really secretly I was thinking, “Oh god, I wish they ask for a second one, because I’d love to do another one!

TB: Were you just waiting for permission from Virgin?

AP: Yeah, because they were having to fund it. But it was also the thing of, I could say, “Well, yeah, they made me do it.” [laughs] I really wanted to do another Dukes record, because it was so much fun.

It’s hard to fault Mojo for failing to expose Andy’s sleight of hand (the Bernhardt interview was published ten years later), but when it came to the significance of Psonic Sunspot, their take was spot-on: “. . . with parts of Skylarking being distinctly trippy and parts of Psunspot barely pastiche, the distinction between the psychedelic japes of the Dukes and XTC’s real output was getting finer.” Andy confirmed that bit of insight in the TB interview on “Little Lighthouse“:

AP: . . . So, yeah, it was a case of “Yeah, let’s do ‘Little Lighthouse,’ and let’s really turn on the psychedelia on it.” But, like “Little Lighthouse,” several of the numbers on Psonic Psunspot were not intended to be Dukes numbers.

TB: And quite frankly, you can tell. The two albums feel very different to me.

AP: They do, yeah.

TB: I think one of the reasons is, the songs are almost a little too good. You’re not taking the piss as much as you did on 25 O’Clock.

AP: No, we did a lot of overt, way over-the-top psychedelia on 25 O’Clock, but when it came to Psonic Psunspot, it was like we were mutating back into XTC, there’s no doubt about it. I’d say that Psonic Psunspot was a missing XTC album.

I wouldn’t go that far (Andy also opined that Skylarking was the second Dukes’ record), but there’s no question that the band’s emerging desire to serve as the “bridge from the ’60s to the ’80s” combined with the painful but productive sessions with master melodist and producer Todd Rundgren encouraged them to move in the direction of the more colorful and melodic music of British psychedelia of the ’60s.

I would describe 25 O’Clock as a mix of British and American psychedelic influences, but for Psonic Sunspot XTC wrapped themselves up in the Union Jack. In the article XTC vs. USA, Andy discussed the stylistic differences between the Yanks and the Brits: “English psychedelia was always kind of light and fun, not like American. In America, psychedelia was dark, lots of drugs, Vietnam, police action. In England it was like kids dressing up in their parents’ clothes, lots of garden parties.” Psonic Sunspot has much more in common with the later phase of British psychedelia which brought us The Who Sell Out and Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake than Strange Days or In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

As for the sonic differences between the two Dukes records, Psonic Sunspot was indeed recorded in a 24-track studio but as Andy remarked to Todd Bernhardt, “It still sounds reasonably in the ballpark.” To my ears, the difference in sound reflects the migration from AM radio to FM radio that began in the States in the mid-to-late 60s: 25 O’Clock is AM, and Psonic Sunspot is FM. Coincident with the improvement of radio fidelity during that era, there were several advancements in the art of recording, including maximizing the capabilities of four-track recording (Sgt. Pepper) and the installation of eight-track machines. Bottom line: both Dukes’ records are authentically psychedelic in tone, style and sound, and the production of each is largely consistent with the technological progress of the era.

While the songs pass the authenticity test (with one glaring exception), the album is somewhat imbalanced because most of the good songs are on side one. You can thank Virgin for messing up the track order, a ludicrous decision I’ll cover when we get to “Collideascope.”

*****

Side One

“Vanishing Girl” (Moulding): So much for the “rule” that Andy sings his songs and Colin sings his. Andy’s voice is dominant in the vocal duet, taking on the main melody (like Lennon) while Colin handles the high harmony (like McCartney). Andy claimed the arrangement was “steered towards The Hollies a lot,” but whether you hear Hollies and I hear Beatles hardly matters—this is a fabulous bit of melodic psychedelia that would have been a hit back in the day.

In another bait-and-switch, the song page on chalkhills.org identifies Sir John (Andy) as the bassist and The Red Curtain (Colin) as the acoustic guitarist. The bass is deep and rumbling—just the way I like it—so kudos to Andy for stretching his musicianship. No mention is made of Lord Cornelius Plum, an unconscionable omission as Dave Gregory’s Ric arpeggios and his closing Beatlesque chord frame the song beautifully.

I have to admit that when I saw the song title I was worried that the vanishing girl in the title would turn out to be some kind of psychedelic magician who went “poof ” every now and then (usually coinciding with someone’s acid trip), but the story is pleasantly pedestrian and Swindonesque—hubby has a wife who likes to go out at night, leaving him with “white shirts looking gray,” a state of affairs about which “people gossip on the doorstep,” much to his embarrassment. He gives the chatterboxes more fodder by letting the paint peel and failing to tend his garden, which I believe is a felony in England. Though part of me wants to scream, “Buy some Clorox and learn how to do your own fucking laundry!” I do feel a bit sorry for the poor wretch and seriously pissed off at the wife for vanishing without notice.

The song ends with a nod to Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake with the very young Lily Fraser (her dad owned the studio) narrating a snippet of a psychedelic-enhanced fairytale, akin to Stanley Unwin’s marvelous performance in “Happiness Stan” (Andy tried to get Unwin but couldn’t afford him). Honors for Dickhead of the Century go to Chris Dahlen of Pitchfork, who opined, “And don’t let the bits of gibberish and fluff—like young Lily Fraser ‘narrating’ Psionic Sunspot—distract from the inspired arrangements on each song.” It’s bad enough that he displayed a complete ignorance of psychedelic history and couldn’t be bothered to check his fucking spelling, but to use valuable writing space to attack an innocent little girl is the ultimate in classlessness.

Count me in as one of the people who won’t miss Pitchfork one bit.

“Have You Seen Jackie?” (Partridge): The main character has conflicting feelings regarding gender identity and I have mixed feelings about “Have You Seen Jackie?” Part of me wants to send a copy of the song to the leaders of every Red State, in envelopes marked “Leave Jackies the Fuck Alone!” but the other part of me knows that Andy would be inundated with a batch of hate mail that might even surpass the vitriol occasioned by “Dear God.”

I guess those Trump-loving idiots never read Slaughterhouse-Five, because if they had they’d know how stupid they are. When Billy Pilgrim’s unstuck-in-time experience plants him on the distant planet of Tralfamadore, the inhabitants inform him that their reproductive rituals involve five sexes, then proceed to tell Billy that earthlings have seven different sexes that play a role in human reproduction but most of them exist in the fourth dimension so you can’t see them. TAKE THAT, MAGA-NUTS!

As he did in “The Everyday Story of Smalltown” on The Big Express, Andy plays two roles in the song. In the verses, he takes on the role of an inhabitant of Smalltown, sneering his way through the lyrics conveying disapproval of Jackie’s strange ways, making jokes at the poor kid’s expense (“Her long black beard is her pride and joy”) and describing her in a pejorative manner: “She’s a strange strange strange little boy” and “She’s a queer queer queer little bird/Shy and quiet neither scene nor herd.” Andy gets an A+ for wordplay but the painful underlying truth is Smalltown is hostile territory for Jackie.

In the chorus he plays himself . . . but only after a brief transitional bridge that serves as a mind-opener:

And all the children follow him around
And all the grownups try to drag her down

Children think it’s fun to dress up and become something different; their minds are open to novelties and differences until their fucked-up parents do everything they can to close them. LGBTQ+  people don’t endanger children—parents endanger children with their rigid and hateful definition of gender roles.

p. s. Nice pun on the word “drag.”

How do I know that Andy is playing himself in the chorus? I’m sure as shit not psychic because in my wildest imagination I never thought it possible that Americans would respond to mass shootings by making it easier for people to own guns. No, it’s because I’ve been listening to Oranges and Lemons in preparation for that review, and Andy’s advice to his child is “This is your life and you be what you want to be.” The chorus is beautifully anthemic, right up there with the chorus to Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” as an inspiration to the disadvantaged:

So we sing
Hey, leave Jackie alone
Hey, his pigeons have flown
Hey, she’s never at home at all these days
Leave Jackie alone

The clincher for me is the line delivered by the unfairly maligned Ms. Fraser, “Jackie couldn’t decide if he was a girl/Or if she was a boy.” There is no hint of sarcasm in her voice, no whiff of “That’s weird.” It comes across as “of course Jackie has the right to choose who she wants to be.”

Dave Gregory plays the role of wizard, supplying the bulk of the background music with an exceptionally energetic and delightful turn on the Mellotron. The stomps, claps and unison vocals on the chorus explode with energy and commitment. “Have You Seen Jackie?” is a great song all around . . . I just wish people would get over their hangups and let Jackies be Jackies. Alas, the song is even more relevant in today’s world, as described in a lyrical analysis that appeared on Songtell on Christmas Eve, 2023.

“Little Lighthouse” (Partridge): This is a tricky one because any assessment of the fit between lyrics and music depends on whether or not you know the backstory.

If you’re unaware of the inspiration for the song, you would likely interpret the mix of Moby Grape-Rolling Stones-Electric Prunes driving rock and semi-erotic lines like “Opens up her red mouth” and “When she opens up her red dress” as a revelatory song about the wonders of female erotic power. In that case, the music and lyrics fit like a glove.

Even Todd Bernhardt was surprised by Andy’s response to the question, “What was the original inspiration for ‘Little Lighthouse’?

AP: People often ask how I write songs, and I tell them, “Well, I might find a chord, and it might remind me of fog, and then I’ll start going on about fog,” but this is actually a case where I found the chords, and they did make me think of fog! And I did think of foghorns, and ships, and lighthouses and how they enable people to see in the dark in some way, you know. Then I took it to the next step, to this beautiful vision that enables you to see things more clearly—it’s about my daughter, basically.

TB: Really?

AP: Yeah, my baby daughter. She’s the one with the “skin of rubber marble.” Because that’s what I thought baby skin was like. And she had the red dress, and she’d stare at you, and you’d think, “Whoa! I can see what life’s about now.” It was quite a deep little song, lyrically.

TB: That’s funny, because I could see that you were saying how a woman can enable you to see, she provides the light for you to see things you couldn’t see before.

AP: Sure, but then it’s also about my daughter, and about having a child. Suddenly you see what you’re there for, and things become clearer. It’s one of those moments in life, when you give birth to kids — suddenly you go through a door into another place.

In that case, the music doesn’t fit at all. Once you interpret the lyrics through that lens the lyrics take on a certain tenderness that would have been better expressed through an acoustic arrangement, a “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” approach or the lighter rock of Buddy Holly with a few psychedelic touches—more like the demo version on Fuzzy Warbles Volume Three.

If you can manage it, I’d listen to the version on Psonic Sunspot through the erotic lens and reserve the father-daughter connection for a poetry reading. The “19th Nervous Breakdown” bass imitation is pretty cool and the lyrics are pleasantly poetic.

“You’re a Good Man Albert Brown (Curse You Red Barrel)” (Partridge): No attempt to reproduce the sounds of 60s British psychedelia would be complete without at least one music hall number, a form of music incorporated into the catalogs of several luminaries, including the Stones, the Beatles, the Idle Race, Small Faces, the Bonzos, Pink Floyd, Cream, Traffic and the Kinks—especially the Kinks.

The song opens with strange bird-like sounds that lead to a brief dialogue involving Lily as storyteller and Andy as a puffin who seems a bit of a toff. Lily: “The puffin sipped at his herbal tea and sighed . . . ” Puffin: “You can’t get the buttons these days.” Lily: “Hmm.” Once the bird-like sounds vanish we hear someone who has had a pint too many attempt to play the opening bars of the melody and fail miserably. Having suitably prepared the listening audience for the fun to follow, Andy launches the song proper, with Colin, Ian Gregory and Dave (the latter on undrunken piano) supplying the appropriately jaunty beat.

Sounding like he’s had a few, Andy sings an ode to the title character:

Well you’re a good man Albert Brown
And you was wounded in the war
And though you shot some people down
You’re still a good man Albert Brown

Well you’re a good man Albert Brown
Though you are drunk upon the floor
And if you’re buying the next round
Then you’re a good man Albert . . .

In this case, the ellipsis indicates time travel, where we learn that Albert was wounded in the horrific Battle of the Somme where more than one million human beings were either killed or wounded. Andy capitalizes on Albert’s last name as an opportunity to convey Albert’s wartime experience through living color:

Brown was the colour of the mud across the Somme
Red was the blood you spilled upon it
Pink were the fingers of the nurse who dressed your wound
White was the starch upon her bonnet

And you married that nurse
And her name was Els
And then along came dad

Ah, the blessings of wartime romance! As Els is a Dutch name, we can assume that she hailed from Flanders and had escaped to the Allied side after the Germans had occupied most of Belgium. It sounds like things turned out all right in the end . . . or did they? When we look back, we find Albert “drunk upon the floor” after drinking with his mates in the pub . . . likely trying to fight off PTSD. Why isn’t he at home with Els?

After a couple of rounds of the chorus (and another round or two of pints), either Albert (assuming internal dialogue) or one of his buddies helps him get his head on straight:

Brown is the colour of your old walking boots
Green is the cash you’d love to squander
Gold is the colour of your wife’s faithful heart
So get yourself home, no more to wander

And you married that nurse
And her name’s still Els
And another child was had

Yay! Albert and Els are fucking again!

The lengthy and delightful fade features repeated rounds of the chorus sung in gradually collapsing unison by all participants. Either all the band members were as drunk as skunks or had been binging on Richard Burton movies during the recording sessions, but it sounds like a jolly good time was had by all. Though the ending is appropriately celebratory, “You’re a Good Man Albert Brown” is also a brilliantly written anti-war song that celebrates the healing power of love and family.

“Collideascope” (Partridge): That’s funny. The first time I heard this song I immediately thought of “Blackberry Way.” and lo and behold, I nailed it! “ ‘Collideascope’ is Lennon—except that the chords were picked because they sound like The Move’s ‘Blackberry Way’—it’s The Move stealing from The Beatles.”

Andy described the chord progression consistent with his happy ignorance regarding chord names: “So, this chord change—the E minor with the ascending B to C to C# to D — then you go up to G-flat minor and you ascend on the top line again.” The chord pattern is really Em, Em+5, Em6, Em7 to F#m, F#min6, F#m7, Bm. Yes, G-flat minor = F# minor, but you would use G-flat minor in a descending pattern and this is an ascending pattern and I’m pretty sure Andy couldn’t give a shit anyway.

Dave Gregory doesn’t join the proceedings until about a quarter of the way through, but his Mellotron offerings in the minor key passages truly enhance the mystery of the song. Andy identified Dave’s contribution as the part that made the song a success, but I would argue that the chorus is the strongest part of the piece, thanks to the key change to D major and a lush and lovely, eminently singable melody set to perfectly euphonious lyrics:

Wakey Wakey Wakey
Little Sleeper
If you doze much longer
Then life turns to dreaming
Wakey Wakey Wakey
Little Sleeper
If you doze much longer
Then dreams turn to nightmares

By all rights “Collideascope” should have been the album closer, but Virgin had other ideas:

AP: Yeah—“Collideascope” was supposed to be the apocalyptic closing track of side two.

TB: Ohhh—that makes so much more sense to me.

AP: The album should start with the approaching airplane of “You’re My Drug”—you know, the Dukes are flying in, and “Pale and Precious” is the halfway house.

TB: Exactly. That song never felt like an album closer to me.

AP: If you play the sides reversed, that’s how we intended it. They said, “The most commercial thing on here is ‘Vanishing Girl’ and we want to start with it, can we flip the sides?” And it was a case of, “Ohhh, okay.”

TB: Plenty of singles have been the lead song on side two!

AP: But this was their reasoning. To be truthful, they didn’t really want us to do the first Dukes thing, and then, because it sold so well, suddenly they were keen and getting serious—or more serious—about the second one, so they started to interfere.

And Virgin would interfere again on Oranges and Lemons, much to that album’s detriment.

Side Two

“You’re My Drug” (Partridge): So the Dukes’ flight was delayed, but I’m sure that 21st-century travelers can empathize with their plight. Here’s Andy’s take: “‘You’re My Drug’ is meant to be a mixture of ‘Monterey’ by The Animals and ‘So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star’. Monterey is a favourite joke — I dunno what Californians thought of Eric Burdon. He was a Newcastle dwarf, a gnarled Geordie mystic! It was an XTC song, but it was too much like the Byrds; the chord change is so West Coast. So we thought let The Dukes do it like The Byrds!”

I know what this ex-Californian thought of Eric Burdon. I respect him for having good enough taste in women to proposition my mother from the stage at Fillmore West in 1971 but his attempt to become a hippie guru was laughable at best.

Lucky for me, I hear more “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” than “Monterey” in the guitars, bass and rhythm, and the Animals rarely resorted to vocal harmonies. The lyrics are fairly predictable, but the song stands up as a respectful tribute to psychedelic rock and would have made for a great opening track had Virgin not fucked with the track order.

“Shiny Cage” (Moulding): All of Colin’s songs on the album feature an acoustic guitar foundation, but here the acoustic guitar REALLY dominates the sound. There are obvious musical similarities to “I’m Only Sleeping,” but the odd decision to shift to circus-like waltz time on the bridge compromises the comparison and ruins the flow. Nice try, guys, but no dice.

“Brainiac’s Daughter” (Partridge): Now, now Andy, just because you were into DC Comics during the 60s doesn’t turn them into valid psychedelic relics. Everyone knows that the underground comix scene emerged during the psychedelic era, a field dominated by R. Crumb. Fritz the Cat was far more in sync with the zeitgeist than Braniac or the daughter you invented for him.

As for your musical intention “to write as if McCartney had tried to come up with a track around the time of Sgt. Pepper or Yellow Submarine,” you nailed it. Unfortunately, the result is one of Paul’s “granny songs” that John hated with a passion . . . and while I wouldn’t use the word “hate” to describe my feelings about “Honey Pie” and similar efforts, I have a very low tolerance level for excess sugar.

The best part of the track precedes the song, with Lily providing another nod to Odgens‘. “I took the strangely glowing ticket from the giant crane fly and turned to get onto the train. ‘Hurry!’ he hissed, and then before my very eyes turned into a splendid cream bun.” Now that is era-specific.

“The Affiliated” (Moulding): The middle passage that Andy compared to Unit 4+2’s “Concrete and Clay” seems more Bob Crewe or Herb Alpert to my ears and his statement that “Colin wrote ‘The Affiliated’ for our next album but wanted to do it quick before we got bored with it,” is both inappropriate and inaccurate. I became bored somewhere during the second verse. Pseudo-psychedelic at best.

“Pale and Precious” (Partridge): The closing song that shouldn’t have been a closing song crosses the thin line between borrowing classic tropes from a genre and mimicking a specific band, in this case, the Beach Boys. As soon as I heard the Mike Love-like “ba-ba-ba-bas” I screamed in agony. You can credit the band for producing a fairly accurate approximation of the Beach Boys, but I leave feeling the same way I do about America mimicking Neil Young—a poor substitute for the real thing.

*****

Despite the blah of side two, I deeply admire XTC for breaking routine and having some fun with the music they loved growing up. I also firmly believe that the two albums—converted into a single package titled Chips from the Chocolate Fireball—rank among the best psychedelic records ever produced.

But as Dave explained to Record Collector, “That was just a piece of self-indulgent fun and I’m glad people saw the funny side of it. Personally, I could carry on making Dukes albums for the rest of my career, but there’s only so many laughs you can get out of one joke!” Though the Dukes would soon meet their demise in a horrible sherbet accident, that period of self-indulgence made XTC a better band with a broader musical palette at their disposal.