Pitchfork

The concept of late work isn't invoked in too many record reviews, no doubt owing to the fact that most bands don't live to see their third birthdays. There are very few popular musicians out there who produce for a sustained period of time, or whose output has the breadth or depth to warrant considering it as a body of work-- and when such an artist comes along, they're rewarded with a greatest hits collection, not a catalogue raisson. Anyway, people don't think of pop stars as artists-- for good reason really, even if those of us who listen to and write about popular music would prefer to think otherwise-- and ideas common to other forms of criticism very rarely find their way into rock reviews.

Which is as it should be. Still, the idea of late work is arguably applicable to just about any pursuit which spans a couple decades, from sculpture to plumbing. And XTC has certainly been around long enough to qualify. See, here's the thing: people always diss late work. It doesn't matter if you're talking about Bob Mould or Bob Rauschenberg, there's always someone there to say, "I just liked him better when..." Sure, the people talking about Rauschenberg are probably going to use bigger words, but all they're saying is, "I was hip to this guy when we were both young and nobody had ever heard of him and that makes me cooler than you."

Then again, some artists really do fall off as they age. Not only do they become less relevant and more irritating, but in many cases, they're actually laughable: Salvadore Dali and Fishbone spring to mind. Which is why Apple Venus is such a relief. XTC has made a bunch of records, several of which are great records, and then they didn't make a record for a long time-- like since the Bush administration-- and there a was a pretty good chance that this record was not going to be good. It was feared the album would show a band out of touch, past their prime and rusty. As it turns out, though, these guys were putting away a little nestegg of excellent songs during their strike, and Apple Venus finds them picking up pretty much where they left off. Or maybe even a little bit before they left off: this record bridges the gap between the ambitiously poppy Oranges and Lemons and the pastoral Skylarking.

Lyrically, Apple Venus' main preoccupation is paganism. "River of Orchids" starts things off with a vision of the world reclaimed by nature; its overgrown highways and fossilized cars are like a less clever but more convincing version of the Talking Heads' "Nothing but Flowers." "Easter Theater," "Harvest Festival" and "Greenman" take their turns with simlilar pagan issues. Even the album's packaging sports a little occultism, proclaiming "Do what thou will but harm none"-- which some reviewers have taken as a polite note, but which is actually a more responsible version of Aleister Crowley's famous thelemic motto.

What's remarkable about this album is the way it reveals itself. The first listen may slide by, the second and third will reveal a little more of interest, but by the fifth time through, Apple Venus is a vast landscape with lots of little places to dig and explore. The music is built on simple phrases, but the relationships between those phrases becomes tremendously complex. The lyrics invite repitition and close scrutiny, and prove there's a great deal beneath the suface. The art historian Erwin Panofsky said that a great late style married "intense emotion and outward stillness." Of course, he was writing about Titian, not pop music.