If you like XTC, you might also like World Party. Have I complained about World Party yet? They (or he, rather) have caused me no end of consternation.
Once upon a time, a video or two from their latest, Egyptology, was on MTVwhatnot, and I liked it, and after a passing interest I acquired the disc for $8.50 at McKay's. Egyptology is definitely a very good album, a favorite of the 90s (specifically 1997). The single is Call Me Up, but there are more interesting songs on the album--but its real strength is in its total coherence. It's one of those albums that feels like a polished work, rather than a temporal aggregate of songs.
The consternation comes in when I hear a World Party song not from Egyptology, on satellite radio: Is It Like Today? from Bang!. Then, later at McKay's, I happen to come across, in the trash/tripe rack, Bang! for, amazingly, $1.95. $1.95! That's cheaper than the typical singles. The price was because it was in that trash rack, and I think it was in the trash rack because the back with the track list has the band members in refrigerator-style childscrawl, with penises.
At any rate, some time after those, I discovered another World Party album there, Goodbye Jumbo. Even though one of the people on that failed VH-1 show where people told anecdotes about albums and whatnot had this neat story about how she listened to Goodbye Jumbo when she was in the hospital and had a miraculous (or at least a) recovery, it was also $1.95. Even though I didn't recognize any songs on it, $1.95 wouldn't exactly be that missed if it was bad. So I bought it.
About half the songs on the disc lurched from midbrain memory, where they had implanted themselves and lurked for years, when I listened to them.
So hopefully you can better understand the predicament World Party puts me in.
