Andy Partridge
My Failed Songwriting Career Vol 2 EP
Rating: 7/10
Label: Ape House
Release date: 8 April, 2022
You would think an established songwriting member of a well-known band that had scored hits in the UK and the US, would find his talents as a songsmith to be in demand. Sadly, for Andy Partridge, of the English group XTC, it wasn’t to be. Maybe his songs were too quirky, too ‘English’, but whatever the reason it seems he never managed to get his songs into other people’s setlists. So, rather than leave these songs in the graveyard, Partridge has decided to resuscitate them himself. Last year he gave us Volume 1 of his failed songwriting career and this year we get volume 2. The four songs on this EP are a somewhat eclectic quartet; not surprisingly as each one had its own brief when they were written.
The two stand out tracks are Let’s Make Everything Love and Come On Back. Let’s Make Everything Love was written with a number of jazz singers in mind. It’s a wonderful swing jazz tune, with great lyrics like, “{Let’s make your buttons ping, let’s make my mattress spring.”} It’s a number you can imagine being sung in some NY club during the Christmas holidays, with log fires burning and snow a falling. Why this was never picked up is a mystery.
With a brief to write a Beatlesque number, Partridge came up with Come On Back, and it really does have that Lennon/McCartney melancholy pop sound. It’s a song about losing that someone special and is very catchy and the more you hear it, the more it gets you singing along and your toe tapping.
The other two songs on here are Seesaw, with hints of 60s Small Faces and Kinks, that could easily have been an XTC song, and the rather odd Love Is The Future. The latter has a psych acid sound and starts with the lyrics, “{Mumsy little space bitch with your carve control knife!}” It sounds a bit like an alien troupe, who have no understanding of music, but have studied the human pop charts and come up with this. Heaven knows who Partridge wrote it for!
All in all a really interesting collection that has two songs which I for one am very glad haven’t been left in the songwriting graveyard.
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This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture April, 2022
Mark Ray 