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Label: Geffen Records
Release Date: 1991-03-19
List Price: $11.98
Buy Now: $2.49 - $12.51
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Additional Info: Tracks Reviews
One of their top 3 albums (4 stars)
This album is brilliant. It's an edgy clash of direction. I can understand fans of later-XTC not digging "Go 2" but I was really into them when I picked this up (on vinyl) sometime in 1983. Truthfully, I really have not much use for later-period XTC. I find them too predictable and maudlin. "Oranges and Lemons" pretty much bookends their place in my collection. "Go 2" came out before the term "New Wave" defined anything and, put into the context of the musical times it was released, the album finds the band staking their claim and announcing themselves to their contemporaries (and audience) of that short and exciting era. Namely, The Talking Heads, Wire, Gang of Four, Oingo Boingo, Devo, and a few forgotten but pretty neat acts. All bands initially founded on principles of edgy, arty, and unique new ideas of melody and structure. Almost all steadily moved towards entirely predictable and traditional styles of their chosen subgenre of popular song. (Whew!)
I'm aware XTC isn't particularly fond of this release. They have a wealth of fantastic records but given their output of, say; the last ten years, that opinion matters little to me. "Go 2" is XTC's most interesting release. The smartly-designed LP (CD art boringly altered) cover required you to pull out the inner-sleeve and place it just so to read the entire spiel. The songs are interesting, ponderous and open to wide interpretation. Like good jazz, it requires the listener to pay attention. If you prefer your messages spoon-fed to you, messages you know you'll agree with anyway, download, "Dear God."
|  | | | A Glowing Advert for Swindon (3 stars)
Raucous, loud and explosive! I discovered the true purpose of this album when I had spent a long day and night drinking myself into a slow stupor. Returning to my student digs, it made perfect sense to put XTC on the record player. But even in my drunken condition the old dilemma reared its ugly head, which album? Prior to this evening Go 2 had never been one of my favourites and for some years I considered XTC's first two albums too be rather juvenile and badly produced. But in my inebriated condition as soon as the angular and schizophrenic "Meccanic Dancing" roared into life, the album made perfect sense. If listened to in the cold light of day Go 2 is not one of the Swindon group's finest hours, but the songs have the unnerving and jagged melody that matched how my heart was racing and how my head was swimming. This allusion to a drinking culture and nights out informs the album in a thematic way also - "The Rhythm", "Crowded Room", "Beat Town" and "Buzzcity Talking", all to a certain extent illustrate the love that this group of people had with hitting the town on a Saturday night and getting totally pissed. Musically it has been well documented that this isn't much of a progression from "White Music", but I would argue that there is something of a loose concept to Go 2, and the concept is simply this; Go 2 is the perfect drinking album. Go 2 the pub, get tanked up and this album becomes a masterpiece of hyperkinetic energy, even if a good deal of the lyrics by Partridge's own admission are nonsense. | | | | Hastily put together sophomore slump. (2 stars)
XTC's "Go 2" was the band's second album of 1978, and it shows signs of being hastily recorded and put out before the material was as ready. Largely the same thing only different as their debut, "White Music", the best material on "Go 2" show signs of things to come, but the majority of it is largely forgettable ska/punk new wave.
Admittedly, the album certainly opens well enough, with "Meccanik Dancing (Oh We Go!)" being an energetic mechanical rock piece like those that would be all over the next few albums with a loping bassline, skanking guitars and an odd, shouted vocal. The second piece "Battery Bridges (Andy Paints Brian)", finds songwriter Andy Partridge channelling Brian Eno (considered for producer of the album) for this churning, "Another Green World"-like number whose serene nature provides a great offset to the opener.
Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there, moving from one forgettable ska-tinged new wave piece ("Red") to another ("Life is Good in the Grenhouse"). It also doesn't seem to matter whether its Partridge ("Jumping in Gomorrah"), bassist Colin Moulding ("Buzzcity Talking") or organist Barry Andrews ("My Weapon") who writes the piece, there's not much going on-- none of it's bad (well, ok, "My Weapon" is pretty bad), it just doesn't grab you. The notable exception is the punky power chord workout "Crowded Room", Moulding's best early contribution to the band that's loaded with energy even if the vocal line can get stunningly annoying (well, ok, not nearly as annoying as the chorus of "My Weapon"...).
One thing that is notable about the album is the artwork, where rather than including some sort of photograph it instead has an essay describing the marketing intent of each component of the artwork in sarcastic fashion.
This reissue has been remastered and sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday. Unfortunately, like "White Music", it does serve to nicely date the recording significantly, but the sound is fantastic. The remaster also adds an early single as a bonus track-- "Are You Receiving Me?"-- which had also been included in some versions of the album. It's actually a decent new wave track, with a driving rhythm and some of Moulding's best early bass playing.
All in all, "Go 2" is really a subpar effort. It was clearly rushed out and suffers from a total lack of development of ideas as well as not enough good ideas to fill a record. The band would fare much better in the future (including "Go 2"'s followup, "Drums and Wires"), this one is probably only for fans. | | | | One of XTC's best releases - a drastic and spastic piece of plastic (5 stars)
This is the album that turned me on to XTC. Go2 is their second album and for those that haven't heard their first two albums you are in for a big suprize. This is the last album to feature original keyboardist Barry Andrews who was replaced with multi-instrumentalist Dave Gregory for the next album Drums and Wires. And largely because of Barry, the music is radically different from subsequent albums. At this stage of their career XTC were playing '60s inflected absurdist, speed freakbeat new wave punk pop. Energetic as a live wire and drastically spastic. XTC's take on pop/punk music was completely original, sounding like nothing their contemporaries were playing circa 1979, owing as much to the British invasion of the sixties, and krautrock as punk rock. From the disco on acid Meccanik Dancing to the totally incorrect My Weapon to the heroin electro haze of Battery Brides to the wonderful upbeat punk of Crowded Room, this is XTC at their most unconventional, energetic and for me their most original, with lyrics as irreverently clever as the music is daring. I love Barry Andrew's crappy sounding spastic organ playing, and Andy Partridges herky jerky slash and burn guitar. It's not their best album, that would (probably) be Black Sea or Drums And Wires and it's far from their worst album, the mannerist exercise in tedium that is Mummer. But hey I'm a guy who liked Big Black Express much more than their overheated and overproduced "masterpiece" Skylarking. I like drums and guitars not violins. Go2 is XTC at their irreverant best, before the gorgeous pop pretentions of Nonsuch and back when the band thought that guitars were "fishing rods for girls." I have this on vinyl and the album cover was one of the funniest and most subversive I've ever seen basically explaining what the function of what an album cover is, telling you that you are being duped while duping you, very funny and cynical. | | | | Two Classics with a Few Goods and Lots of Excess (3 stars)
The first two songs are amazing! | | | |
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