My Top 1000 Songs #763: Your Gold Dress

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Over the spread of a 1985 EP and a 1987 full-length follow-up, post-punk alt.pop legends XTC cosplayed as imaginary late 60s psychedelic troubadours The Dukes of Stratosphear. The music is uniformly wonderful, fun and exuberant, blending the influences of the Beatles, Barrett-era Pink Floyd, the Beach Boys, Zombies, Tomorrow, and others but rising well above mere imitation. Frankly, I like it more than anything XTC did in their own name (as much as I love so much of XTC's proper music).

"Your Gold Dress," from the 25 O'Clock EP, is built on a dark riff, a little on the heavy side, which has been wedged into my brain for decades. But the track truly achieves a state of ecstasy when the minor key menace of the verses slips into the major key cheer of the chorus, buzzsaw guitars swapped for chirping harpsichords. The song feels like a great lost outtake from the Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request, and like that album's "2000 Light Years From Home" and "She's A Rainbow," XTC mine that unnerving tension where the venture into trippy psychedelia can't quite break loose from the band's bluesier roots.

Here's a German-language cover, cuz why not?