#The Dukes Of Stratosphear #XTC spinoff #1960s retro #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #psychedelic pop #60s psych rock homage
XTC alter-egos, the Dukes of Stratosphear, may have begun as a joke, but this joke band's records rank with their creators' best work. It all started after XTC's Andy Partridge and producer John Leckie (Stone Roses) got tossed off a producer gig for Mary Margaret O'Hara's Miss America record for reasons that may involve strangeness on O'Hara's part, or religious differences, or the fact that Partridge told the band they needed a click track. As Chris Twomey's XTC biography Chalkhills and Children recounts, Leckie wanted to get something back for the time he'd lost waiting for the O'Hara gig. Partridge mentioned that he and bandmate Colin Moulding had written a bunch of psychedelic songs that were too out-there for XTC; Leckie pitched it to Virgin, asking them for £5,000 to cut a record. When they were done, they returned £1,000 of it.
The first EP, 25 O'Clock, shipped on April Fools' Day 1985, and it was rumored at the time (and official not long after) that the Dukes of Stratosphear were really XTC - with Partridge and Moulding as Sir John Johns and the Red Curtain, third member David Gregory taking the nom de hoax Lord Cornelius Plum, and David's brother Ian, E.I.E.I. Owen - on drums. But some people believed the band was real, and that the records really had been dredged out of a warehouse after decades of neglect. Why not? Not only did the Dukes stick to period instruments and effects, not only did they wear paisley shirts and floppy felt hats to the studio, and not only were all the silly lyrics and psychedelic excesses forgivable, but the band is fantastically, blindly in love with its material. And the songwriting kills. The Dukes began as a joke, but this joke band's two albums rank with XTC's best.
Quoting Partridge from definitive source Chalkhills.org: "The Dukes were the band we all wanted to be in when we were at school: Purple, giggling, fuzztone, liquid, and arriving. If you want to know where those cheap charlatans 'The Beatles', 'Pink Floyd', 'The Byrds', 'The Hollies', and 'The Beach Boys' stole their ideas from, well just listen to this and weep." But even though the homages are front and center, picking out influences is one of the dullest ways to dig these records; hearing these guys bathe in their boyhood record collections is the chief hook, followed by way they let their eyes bug out a little farther than on their "proper" albums of the time. XTC's Big Express and Skylarking came from a working band with adult problems and a grown-up's nostalgia; the Dukes have been like way out of it since high school.
Still, picking out the influences on the two Dukes of Stratosphear records is a good music nut's game. Some are obvious: compared to Pink Floyd's subtler "Arnold Layne", Partridge's "Have You Seen Jackie?" throws a victory parade with acid-laced confetti for its crossdressing hero(ine); "Pale and Precious" apes Beach Boys harmonies years before everyone in Brooklyn was doing it. Other references are subtler or better mashed-up, but rarely is the source of the song the point. You don't have to know the Hollies to adore how perfectly Moulding crafted the melody of "Vanishing Girl", or the way he bites off the high notes on the chorus.
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, like the backwards autoharp on "Have You Seen Jackie?" Or the "banana fingers piano" on "Braniac's Daughter", or the didg's and fuzz pedals and sick guitars and harpsichords and drawkcab loops and sped-up singing, and at the end of "Mole from the Ministry" a backward voice actually says, "you can fuck your atom bomb." Hey, it was the times.
Although I've been mixing up both of the albums in this review, there are marked differences between the debut EP and the career-ending LP. 25 O'Clock is more fun and more loyal to its sources; Psonic Psunspot has stronger songs, especially on the front half, but they're also not far removed from proper XTC material. 25 O'Clock is quick and sneaky; Psonic is wilder, but "The Affiliated" wanders, with the Latin section arguably the weirdest thing on the whole set.
The Dukes never gave a big, dramatic reason for breaking up. (Neither did XTC). They just hung up their axes after Psonic Psunspot, shelving a concept for a rock opera called The Great Royal Jelly Scandal. But they did get in one reunion: the reissue of 25 O'Clock includes their 2003 charity recording "Open a Can (of Human Beans)", which pays tribute to nothing more obviously than 90s-era XTC. And it sounds oh so unfortunately grown-up. From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12893-25-oclock-psonic-psunspot/
