All Along the Watchtower

Welcome to another installment of "All Along the Watchtower" Watch, wherein we listen to various versions of, well, "All Along the Watchtower."

Here's one I've always liked. Although the great Stereogum thinks it's failure, I'll be so bold as to disagree. Andy Partridge sounds remarkably like Bono doing a half-assed Bob Dylan impersonation, and considering this was released two years before U2's first LP was even recorded, that's not only all the more impressive, it makes one wonder if XTC wasn't perhaps a bigger influence on U2 than is commonly acknowledged. (I don't actually think so.)

Admittedly, the scat singing at the end doesn't really work, and the harmonica seems an odd choice for a sort of punkish take on the classic, albeit more in the angular Wire school of intellectual punk, with perhaps some ska influences mixed in there as well. Still, a worthy addition to the canon.

Stray(s)

I'm really digging the new Republic of Wolves album, No Matter How Narrow. It sounds like...I can't quite get it. Definitely like an American XTC, but there's someone else in there that's so familiar but which I can't quite place. Doesn't matter. They sound like them and they sound great.

Favorite Song Friday: The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead

That sound.

An electric guitar being plugged in, the expectation being set up, the tension building, albeit ever so slightly, because there's almost no time before the first chord's played and my God what a chord. What a way to start a song and an album.

XTC has never been one of my favorites. I admire and respect them and enjoy the hell out of some of their stuff but there's something about them I find them off-putting—almost certainly the fact that we don't click is a flaw in myself. So when they had their early new wave-ish hits on MTV, I was unmoved. When Skylarking was proclaimed the Sgt. Pepper's of the 1980s, I was unimpressed. When my imaginary friend Chris brought this home from his job at MTV, I...well, we put it on, since all we had was a small boombox and about five CDs, so beggars and all that.

That initial noise caught me, the first chord punched me in the face and then those drums, larger than Mount Everest gave me sweet, sweet CPR with breath vaguely redolent of honeysuckle and optimistic anger. And then...a harmonica? No, not a harmonica. An utterly asskicking harmonica, a strange, such a strange choice for the lead instrument and absolutely perfect.

And then the lyrics started. And the very first words are the name Peter Pumpinkhead. Which is just such a stupid name that I was immediately...nope, the melody wins. And then the gist of the lyrics, about a guy with his priorities so perfectly straight that of course he has to be killed, turned the name from something dumb into something whimsical, something which not only fit the lyrics, but managed to turn the entire thing into a not-entirely-obvious allegory rather than a hectoring screed.

It's still got the little XTC touches, the kind of obsessive attention to detail I don't normally love in my rock and roll, but which here works perfectly: the cymbal crashes on the offbeat rather than the expected downbeat, the cheers of "hooray!" only every other chorus, the unusual switch from the major to the minor at the end of the chorus, the way the bassline in the first verse ascends...and then just hangs there, toying with you, the sonics so pristine you could eat off them.

In the end, it's a perfect marriage of words and music, composition and performance.

Oh my.