Coat of Many Cupboards

Coat of Many Cupboards finishes the job that the 1990 collection Rag 'N' Bone Buffet started, unearthing a deluge of outtakes, demos, home recordings, acoustic versions, and rare live tracks from XTC's long, adventurous existence. Buffet and the band's other singles collections and box sets only scratched the surface of what's out there; any serious XTC collector knows about the mountains of material that have been recorded throughout the band's 26-year existence, living in third-generation tapes passed around from fan to fan. The four-disc Cupboards tracks an awful lot of it down, cleans it up, and puts it all together, showing off the overwhelming creativity and songcraft that XTC's Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding have displayed over the decades. In all, 41 of the 60 tracks here have never before been released, with lo-fi versions of favorites like "Dear God" turning this into an interesting journey for casual fans and a dream collection for die-hard fanatics.

Precious and rare live material pops up early on the first disc in the form of "Spinning Top" and "Traffic Light Rock," documenting a jagged, brash sound that seems a far cry from the meticulous approach and intricate layers of later records like 1989's Oranges and Lemons. The first two discs track that evolution in detail, exploring the band's early Clash-like pop-punk and the skewed social commentary of records like 1980's Black Sea, while offering up intriguing nuggets like a demo version of "Senses Working Overtime" from the amazing English Settlement. The last two discs comprise XTC's later incarnation as a studio band after Partridge's mid-'80s mental breakdown and subsequent retirement from the stage. Moving through the revolutionary Skylarking, including a stunning demo of "Grass," the music slowly morphs into the densely produced, late-Beatles sound of Oranges and 1992's Nonsuch.

The set also includes a 60-page booklet as well as track-by-track commentary from Partridge and Moulding, making this a must-have for collectors even if they have somehow tracked down all this stuff themselves. One final note: the band does leave off material from Apple Venus Pt. 1 and Wasp Star (Apple Venus Pt. 2), but only because it's already been well-documented with the outtake records Homespun and Homegrown. --Matthew Cooke