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floodfish's review
4.0
If you're an XTC fan and you're interested in songwriting, you can't not like this book. Andy is charming, insightful, funny, prickly, petulant, discursive, brilliant, all the stuff we love him for. Todd asks great questions and has a really good rapport with Andy—a good balance of researcher, fan, friend, and critic.
There's lots of info and insight into Andy's creative process, the history of XTC, and the meaning and inspiration, and impact of the individual songs.
The tour of Swindon intro is nice. Wish it had a map like we get in the GO2 sleeve, though!
Less optimal things about the book:
Too much of repetition and small talk: the interviews seem to just be verbatim transcriptions, so if the same topic comes up in multiple interviews, or if they're just trading one-liners, we have to read it all.
The song selection feels arbitrary; I guess it's fine and I hope they do more?
I read most of these on MySpace 9 years ago. I was expecting more new stuff. Weird that it took so long to make the book, but stuff is hard, and the content is still relevant. But keep in mind that in many ways it's a reflection of where Andy was in 2007-8, rather than 2016.
The images are cool, but seems they could be more obviously linked to the songs and topics discussed.
There's lots of info and insight into Andy's creative process, the history of XTC, and the meaning and inspiration, and impact of the individual songs.
The tour of Swindon intro is nice. Wish it had a map like we get in the GO2 sleeve, though!
Less optimal things about the book:
Too much of repetition and small talk: the interviews seem to just be verbatim transcriptions, so if the same topic comes up in multiple interviews, or if they're just trading one-liners, we have to read it all.
The song selection feels arbitrary; I guess it's fine and I hope they do more?
I read most of these on MySpace 9 years ago. I was expecting more new stuff. Weird that it took so long to make the book, but stuff is hard, and the content is still relevant. But keep in mind that in many ways it's a reflection of where Andy was in 2007-8, rather than 2016.
The images are cool, but seems they could be more obviously linked to the songs and topics discussed.
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