Oranges & Lemons is the 11th studio album and the second double album by the English band XTC, released 27 February 1989 on Virgin Records. It is the follow-up to 1986's Skylarking. The title (derived from the nursery rhyme of the same name) was chosen in reference to the band's poor financial standing at the time, while the music is characterised as a 1980s update of 1960s psychedelia. It received critical acclaim and became the band's highest-charting album since 1982's English Settlement, rising to number 28 in the UK and number 44 in the US.
The album is primarily pop and rock, although a variety of other styles are plundered throughout, such as jazz, reggae, hard rock, Middle Eastern music and Zairean soukous. 12 of the album's 15 tracks were written by guitarist Andy Partridge, with the rest by bassist Colin Moulding. The work projected brighter, more upbeat and aggressive moods than Skylarking, and the harsher effect returned the group closer to the sound of their earlier records. Lyrically, most of the songs focus on parent-child relationships and the state of world affairs. Partridge's ornate vision for the psychedelic opening track "Garden of Earthly Delights" exemplified the album's general aesthetic, which he described as songs that could be singles in a "bizarre perfect universe".
XTC recorded the album in Los Angeles with American producer Paul Fox (his first major production job) and Mr. Mister drummer Pat Mastelotto. Recording lasted from June to September 1988, during which Virgin threatened to drop the project numerous times due to its growing expenses. Total production costs were estimated to be £180,000 (about a quarter million in US dollars). The cover art was intended to resemble the work of Heinz Edelmann, the art director for the 1968 film Yellow Submarine.
Lead single "Mayor of Simpleton", a jangle pop song, reached number 46 on the UK Singles Chart and number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it their only US single to chart. It was followed with "King for a Day" (number 11 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks) and "The Loving" (no chart showing). The group embarked on a brief acoustic-guitar American radio tour and made their first live performances in front of an audience since 1982. One performance for MTV inspired the network to invite more artists to perform stripped-down sets, calling the series "unplugged". However, attempts to coax Partridge back into regular touring were unsuccessful.
Background
Since 1982's English Settlement, XTC had withdrawn from concert touring. Studio experimentation and 1960s influences increasingly showed in their records, culminating in the 1985 mini-album 25 O'Clock, which saw the band adopting retro-psychedelic personas as "the Dukes of Stratosphear". The trend continued into XTC's Skylarking (1986), becoming one of the best-selling records of their career. However, the group still "languished in relative obscurity" amid a growing cult following. Recording sessions for Skylarking were fraught with tension between Partridge and producer Todd Rundgren. Rundgren took issue with Partridge's tendency to fill arrangements with as many ideas as possible, and in turn, Partridge resented that his suggestions were repeatedly undermined by Rundgren.
After Skylarking, Partridge suffered a brief writer's block. He recalled "getting really worried. I wrote a few things and I thought it was shit. Then suddenly loads of stuff started coming out, and it wasn't shit." To appease requests from his bandmates and Virgin Records, he agreed to record one more Dukes album, Psonic Psunspot (1987). It consisted partly of XTC songs rejected for earlier albums. Both 25 O'Clock and Psonic Psunspot outsold the latest XTC albums of the time (1984's The Big Express in the former's case). They then contributed a newly recorded song, "Happy Families", to the John Hughes film She's Having a Baby (1988).
In early 1988, XTC began rehearsing material for their next LP. At the suggestion of A&R executive Jeremy Lascelles, young American producer Paul Fox was recruited based on the strength of a Boy George remix that the label commissioned of him. Partridge disliked the original track but enjoyed Fox's remix: "It was really shiny, powerful and impressive." Fox subsequently flew to England and met Partridge at his home: "He was obviously a huge fan of the band and was willing to translate what we wanted onto tape." He offered them a cheap studio rate in Los Angeles, which the band accepted. Another reason for recording in the US with an American producer, guitarist Dave Gregory said, was that the US had become "our biggest market". XTC, accompanied by the Moulding and Partridge families, arrived in Los Angeles on 12 May and stayed at the Oakwood Apartments in north Hollywood. The families returned home after two months; Partridge and bassist Colin Moulding then shared an apartment for the remainder of their stay.
Music and lyrics
Oranges & Lemons is primarily a pop and rock album, although a variety of other styles are plundered throughout, such as jazz, reggae, hard rock, Middle Eastern music and Zairean soukous. It projected brighter, more upbeat and aggressive moods than XTC's recent work, and the harsher effect positioned the group closer to the sound of their earlier records. The psychedelic ambiance of the Dukes records is retained, albeit with a lesser emphasis on "loopy" humour. In Stereogum writer Rob Ham's description, the intention was to filter the Dukes aesthetic using contemporary instruments and technology; as a result, most of the album's songs, and especially Partridge's, are arranged in a maximalist fashion exemplified by the first song, "Garden of Earthly Delights". Gary Ramon of Record Collector concurred that "while a 60s edge was detectable, the sound was firmly rooted in the Eighties."
Before sessions began, Partridge envisioned the album as "a very simple, banal-sounding record" with more basic arrangements than the final product: "it got lost in translation a little and came out rather multi-layered - in fact, very dense. We just got swept along with the enthusiasm." Journalist Nick Reed observed of the LP, "Nearly every instrument is mixed to the forefront; it's too well-arranged to be cacophonous, but there's a degree of sensory overload, especially given the band's newfound tendency to blast synthesizers in our faces." Many vocal counterpoints are heard throughout the record. Partridge likened it to "several songs happening at once. It's musical masturbation ... Not many people do that now - not since West Side Story or South Pacific".
23 songs were demoed for the LP, with the final 15 chosen by Paul Fox. All of the selections were written by Partridge, except three by Moulding ("King for a Day", "One of the Millions", and "Cynical Days"). Lyrically, several of the songs focus on parent-child relationships in addition to the state of world affairs. For Partridge, this was partly due to the fact that he had toddler-aged children. He attributed the influence of the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds to Moulding's songs for the record. Moulding himself said that he had been in a depression writing the songs for the record. XTC biographer Chris Twomey identified "Garden of Earthly Delights", "Here Comes President Kill Again", and "The Loving" as examples where "the Dukes were still alive in spirit", whereas "King for a Day", "Poor Skeleton Steps Out", "Hold Me My Daddy", and "Across This Antheap" indicated "completely fresh directions". Of these, "King for a Day" and "The Loving" were the album's "most overtly commercial songs". In the analysis of music writer Richard Walls:
Commenting on the influence of the Beatles, Partridge said, "There is some Beatles in our music, but also some Captain Beefheart, some jazz bands, some others who were not necessarily musicians, like Miró, Walt Disney ... If people see only some Beatles, it is because they want to search only for some Fab Four." He acknowledged that it was their first work in which they were conscious that they had a record-buying audience, particularly in the US. External stresses affecting the group included their ongoing litigation against former manager Ian Reid. Colin Moulding remembered, "it was about to come to a head, and that was the worrying thing ... If we hadn't had a relatively successful record with Oranges and Lemons at that time, we would have been in deep shite".
Production Setting and atmosphere
Given an initial budget of £150,000 (equivalent to £ in ), rehearsals began on 16 May with Pat Mastelotto of Mr. Mister joining the group as session drummer. The band later recalled the rehearsals as especially grueling, but ultimately worthwhile. Recording lasted from 6 June to mid September at Ocean Way Studio One and Summa Music Group Studios. The basic tracks were handled at Ocean Way, while overdubs and mixing was at Summa. Trumpeter Mark Isham was hired for a few overdubs. Virgin threatened to drop the project several times due to the broken budget, which grew upwards to $250,000 ($ in ). A lot of the money went into studio personnel salaries, as well as the members' and their families' living expenses in Los Angeles.
Fox was determined to treat the group with more patience than Rundgren had for Skylarking. The sessions ran more smoothly as a result, although the group struggled with his inexperience as a producer. About a quarter of the songs were recorded without a click track. Partridge praised Mastelotto for his work ethic: "he actually made little samples of sounds and things in his garage for us to use. He was really very committed to being one of the band". One such sample was the sound of a snare drum with its waveform cut off before the attack. Mastelotto said "Andy loved it so much that it turned out to be almost on the entire record." He had been a longtime fan of XTC and prepared for the recording by asking them for their favourite records "so that I could maybe get a little further inside their head".
One of the recurring in-jokes during the sessions was a spin-the-wheel dial used for determining takes. The wheel's labels were "Great – best take ever", "better than the Beatles", "pretty good", "okay", "not so good", "possibly acceptable", "pretty bad", "weak", "horrible", "dreadful", and "the worst shit I'd ever heard". Another in-joke was the "Colonel Cunt Hat" and "Thumb of Decision" that anyone would wear if it was thought that they had a poor attitude. During one early session, Mastelotto recalled:
Dave Gregory, in his words, took credit for "quite a lot [of] the arrangements and the overdubs". He was frustrated that his suggestions to Fox were almost always deferred to "the songwriter", which meant either Partridge or Moulding. Both Gregory and Moulding characterised Fox as subservient to Partridge's studio indulgences, which they termed "Andy-ness", and felt that it had a negative effect on the album's sound. Mastelotto similarly recalled that engineer Ed Thacker would complain, "Jesus Christ! What's going on in the mix? I don't even have any tracks left!" Guests who visited the sessions included Elvis Costello, who was next door recording his album Spike (1989), KROQ disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer, Chris Squire of Yes, David Byrne of Talking Heads and actor River Phoenix. Partridge has said that Phoenix was an "utter and anal" fan of the band, and urged him to phone a friend who was "also a big fan", Keanu Reeves.
Equipment and mixing
Moulding used primarily a Wal bass with a Fender P-Bass as backup. Partridge played a