Two strong-willed musicians in one small studio, fighting over drum parts and song choices, with a third man insisting on almost no second takes. That was the atmosphere when the English rock group XTC recorded Skylarking, their eighth studio album, released on October 27, 1986 through Virgin Records.
Todd Rundgren takes the reins
The American musician Todd Rundgren produced the record, and he did not arrive as a hired hand. He proposed the whole concept and the running order, selecting songs from more than twenty demos written by XTC's two songwriters, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding. The sessions ran from April to June 1986, mostly at Utopia Sound in Woodstock, New York, with a few tracks cut in San Francisco at the studio belonging to The Tubes. Prairie Prince, that band's drummer, came in as a session player. The studio itself was a two-story building on the edge of the woods, and the musicians stayed in a guest house nearby while Rundgren lived in the main house.
The album was conceived as a cycle about a day, a year, the seasons, or a life, and its title points to the lark bird and to sailor slang for fooling around. The sound leaned heavily on 1960s psychedelic music, with Rundgren providing orchestral arrangements and a range of equipment.
Two Hitlers in one bunker
Tension ran high, especially between Rundgren and Partridge, who compared working with the producer to two Hitlers in one bunker. They clashed over drum parts, which songs to include, and other details, while Rundgren pushed for minimal takes and no overdubs.
Tension ran high, especially between Rundgren and Partridge, who compared working with the producer to two Hitlers in one bunker.
The group arrived without rehearsing, expecting Rundgren to reshape the songs. The basic tracks were recorded in the same order they appear on the album, and the entire session used only three reels of tape: one for each side and one for bonus material. Rundgren handled the sound design and drum programming himself, and the mixing used an unusual tape speed of fifteen inches per second. The original release ran 45 minutes.
Moulding's five songs and the sequence
Moulding ended up with five songs on the tracklist, more than usual for an XTC album, and his pieces were woven together with Partridge's into a single sequence.
A mixing error made the original release sound thin, a flaw nobody caught until 2010, when it was fixed for later remasters. Yet the album found its audience anyway, largely through the song Dear God, which became a hit on American college radio.
That song was not even on the first US pressing. When Dear God took off, the American distributor Geffen Records recalled the album and reissued it with the track included. The controversy around the song included angry calls from listeners to radio stations and at least one report of a planted bomb. In the United Kingdom, the album reached only number 90, and both of its lead singles stalled at number 100. In the United States, after Dear God was added, the album climbed to number 70. Rolling Stone later placed Skylarking among the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s, and Pitchfork did the same in its own list.
The fights in the studio are now part of the record's story. The album was preceded by the mini-album 25 O'Clock in 1985 and followed by Psonic Psunspot in 1987. Its sound is usually described as pop rock and psychedelia, with writers also placing it in baroque pop and alternative rock.